Nuclear Bombs
by varicose
Summary: Clary Fray is a young graffiti artist, fighting an on going battle with cancer. When she meets Jace Wayland, a wild and beautiful musician, she thinks she finally has something to live for. In a world of dying, of inner demons, and suffering, Clary tries to hold onto Jace while their lives spin and speed toward the end. AU, Rated M for later chapters.
1. One

_Disclaimer: Don't own, don't sue. _

The band didn't suck, but the bar did. It was one of those pubs that moonlights as a club by pushing away the tables to the side of the room so that kids can crowd to the front. Up there, a makeshift stage held too many amps and the band of stringy guys. They were howling about some woman, some _succubus woman_, and they had a terrible band name that Clary Fray couldn't quite remember. She couldn't quite remember why she was here, either. It wasn't as if any of her friends were in the throng of people, and it wasn't as if she was going to make any new friends. Clary was small, she looked forgettable, people usually ignored her and it was no different here. She couldn't see over half the people in the crowd, she couldn't drink, but somehow she still wanted to come to this stupid pub and listen to this stupid band, if only to feel normal for a minute or two.

She stood near the back of the room, peanut shells and God knows what else crunched under her feet. Being here alone made her feel vaguely conscious of all the couples and groups of friends that were having great times near her. She had not even bothered to dress up much, only sporting an old T-shirt of her mom's, cargo pants that were splattered in paint on the left leg, and her usual black and white sneakers, frayed laces and all. She let her hair down, however, remembering what Simon had said in the waiting room last week– that she looked like a fire goddess when she let it grow out. Granted, he was stoned out of his mind when he was saying all that, but Clary was prepared to indulge in her hair as much as possible these days.

A tall guy moved to the left in front of her, leaving her line of sight gloriously free so that she could get a good look at the band. The lead singer was this huge guy with mutton chops, and looking like he could have been a rugby player, she was surprised that his voice was so soft and airy. The drummer was still obscured by people who were milling around in front of her. Playing the bass was a girl dressed in a tutu and fake fairy wings, who was juxtaposed next to the guitar player. Now, _he_, looked like the type who belonged in this band, at this pub. He was fit enough, but skinny and frail looking, as if he hadn't eaten in a few days. Long-ish blonde hair covered most of his face, so Clary couldn't see how good looking he was. It was his hands that she was interested in, his hands as they moved along the neck of the guitar with ease. They were long fingers, and she idly wondered if he played the piano as well. As the singer let out a long moan that filled the pub with anticipation, the guitarist boy lifted his head.

Gorgeous.

Someone else inevitably stepped in front of her and blocked her sight, but Clary found herself uncharacteristically maneuvering around the crowd, craning her neck to keep her eyes on the boy. Something told her to get closer. Being small had its advantages in these types of crowds. She slipped under people's arms, into the nooks and crannies until she was right at the side of the stage. The lead singer stopped when the drummer did and he thanked the crowd for being so "bad ass", as he put it.

"We have one last song for you guys. Take it away, Jace," the lead singer said, pointing to the pretty boy with the guitar, who had already began ripping into the next song with his busy fingers.

_So_, she thought, _I know his name. _It wasn't like she would hunt him down after the show, or even try to talk to him, but she was a curious person, Clary Fray. She bounced along a little bit with the last song, but her fingers were itching to draw. She could picture her sketchbook sitting on her bed at home, blank white pages just waiting for the charcoal she was going to throw on it. She kept her eyes on the Jace the guitarist, kept her focus on his stature and the lines that his hair made, framing his face. He was by far the most interesting person in the band, in the whole room. She noticed a handful of spidery tattoos, vines and other random images on his arms. His shirt was nearly a rag, sleeveless and ripped in some places. His jeans were tight.

He muted his guitar for one part of the song where the bass went up in a flare of low notes, and at that moment, he turned and faced her directly. She gasped a little, glad that her voice was completely anonymous in this room, next to the amps. He saw her looking at him, but she still couldn't bring herself to look away. His eyes..._Damn, _she thought. They were tawny, golden and full of light. Screw the charcoal, she'd have to break out her finest coloring pencils to draw him, and even then, she didn't think her drawings could ever do those eyes justice.

Then the weirdest thing happened, he winked at her.

The band cleared off and Clary sunk back into the thinning crowd. She got herself tangled in the commotion of people clambering out of the pub to have a cigarette. A little frantically, she tried to spot the band members, maybe they were selling their E.P in the crowd. The pressure of the people stirring around her got to be too much, so she fled to the washroom to wait out the crowd, disappointed that the guitarist wasn't still around. Sitting on the lid of the toilet seat, Clary looked up at the mountains of amateur graffiti on the stalls. There was a few rude statements about some guy called _Todd,_ a few ancient phone numbers, and one long arrow pointing to a dent in the stall where someone had attempted to build a glory hole. Clary chuckled a bit. She felt a little bewitched, a little obsessed, still pictureing the tawny-eyed guitar boy up on stage. Biting her lip, she dug into her pocket and pulled out a purple sharpie. She wished that she had her whole collection of permanent markers, but this would have to do. In the clear space between _Todd is an asshole, _and _Scotty + Diana = POISON, _Clary began to draw the guy how she'd seen him, looking right at her, from above.

When she finally left the bathroom, the pub crowd was nearly dead. Only a few drunk clusters of friends were standing around, but the bartender had begun to push the tables back to their rightful places. Clary only glanced around for a second or two until her peripheral was shocked by blonde hair. Leaning on the bar, Jace the guitarist was sipping on some kind of clear liquid that could have been vodka. Clary propositioned herself; given the fact that she had a very important doctor's appointment tomorrow, and the results of that could determine the next few years of her life, she had a choice. She could slink out of the bar, return to the familiar streets of Manhattan, and tuck herself into bed at a decent hour, or she could do something brave, something memorable. She chose the latter.

Somehow her legs carried her over to the bar, next to him, and somehow she worked up the nerve to ask the bartender for a bottle of beer.

"What brew?" the bartender asked, which sent Clary into a bit of a panic. She didn't drink beer, she wasn't really supposed to, so how the hell should she know what kind of beer she should get? She opened and closed her mouth, then the bartender said,

"Nice try kid, come back when you're 21."

He chuckled beside her. She could have died, she could have died right there on the sticky bar table.

"Oh, come on Nicky, she's good. She'll have whatever's on tap. Won't you?" This was the first thing she'd heard him say. She would probably remember the sound of his voice forever, just from that one sentence. She turned her head toward him and nodded as calmly as possible.

"Yeah."

Nicky the bartender rolled his eyes, but began filling a pint for her all the same. Jace eyed her while he brought his own glass up to his lips. His elbow was propped lazily on the counter, legs straightened, his hair disheveled and arms bare, he was intimidating to the eyes. Clary fought hard inside her head to think of something to say to him.

"The show...it was awesome," was all she could come up with. She felt embarrassment clawing at the pit of her stomach. _What is the matter with me?_ The bartender placed the pint down without a coaster and Clary grabbed it, glad for something to occupy her hands.

"Really? We're considering disbanding."

She dipped her finger into the foam that was collected at the top. The band had seemed so cool tonight, so put together. Their sound was a mixture of metal and jazz, somehow, with the soft singer's voice and the hard, hard bass. The guitar, of course, had been some kind of inexplicable sound like the notes of a Sinatra song, only on high volume and power.

"Don't do that," she told him. "I've never heard anything like you before." She could have been referring to the whole band, but Clary really meant _I've never heard anyone like_ him_ before. _

Jace smiled with one corner of his mouth.

"You want our autographs or something?" he asked. Clary laughed nervously, worried that she was coming off as a dazzled fan girl, which wasn't exactly false. When she said nothing, Jace asked her,

"So what do you sound like?"

"I don't- I don't sound like anything. I mean, I'm not a musician."

"No one in this city is _really _a musician. Don't you know we're just in it to get laid?"

She nearly knocked over the pint of beer. She was getting the impression that this guy knew how good he was, and he knew that she knew. She could feel that he was trying to play with her, but suddenly she was invigorated to prove him wrong. She wasn't just some underage kid ogling him from the stands.

"Well, I don't know if you're _that _good."

He laughed out loud, then finished his drink in one swig.

"So if you're not a musician, and if you're not looking to get with one, what are you?"

What are you?

No one had ever asked her that before. She wanted to retort with, _what are _you? He was certainly more than what he seemed, but she didn't know how to explain it. It was something, maybe in his eyes, that led her to believe that this was just the tip of the iceberg; a cocky musician with a lazy attitude.

"I draw. And tag. I guess that's it." Really, it was all she could think of to say. Graffiti and art were the only things she was good at.

"Tagging? I wouldn't take you for the illegal type," he said, raising an eyebrow.

"I stay away from schools and institutions. Abandons only." This was the cardinal rule she and Simon had made. It was too easy to get caught spray painting the side of some nice academy in the west side. In abandoned houses and buildings, it was always dark, she could sneak around and lay low under crumbling bricks. Plus, she always liked the look of color on the pallid walls of those dead places.

Jace threw down a ten dollar bill, paying for the beer she hadn't touched. He pulled himself away from the bar, grabbing her wrist in the process. His touch startled her, it was like getting shocked when you go to turn on a light.

"What are you– " she began, but the boy who was practically a stranger didn't let her finish.

"We're going to get some paint."

She halted for a minute, eyeing him suspiciously. She wasn't supposed to be tagging anymore, if her mother ever found out she'd be in big, big shit. Clary thought hard for a second or two, while Jace looked back at her as if to say, _"are you coming or what?" _She quickly fell back into step with him, holding down the butterflies in her stomach. To hell with her mother.

They walked swiftly past the drunk crowd, emerging out of the clubbing district in record time. She found it hard to keep up with his long strides, but she wouldn't tell him to slow down. They didn't chatter much on the way, only pointing out interesting things and people that they saw on the streets. A homeless man with a funny sign; a couple of twelve year old's who were visibly drunk. There was a hardware store on the next block, and she watched as Jace strode, determined, toward it. It was like he was on some kind of mission, though for all intents and purposes, this was Clary's territory.

"Did you ever draw? Ever graffiti?"

"Nope," he answered simply.

"Most people scratch their name in places, at least. Bunk beds at their friends houses?"

He scoffed a bit, saying,

"I didn't really do sleep overs when I was a kid."

She wanted to say something cheeky like, _I'm taking your tagging virginity, _but for the life of her, she couldn't get it up. Instead, they walked the rest of the way in crystal clear silence, the duration of which she spent studying his steady gait. After what seemed like a millennium, the crude lights of the hardware store came into view. Upon entering, the sales people gave them both (but mostly Jace) strange looks, but that was always to be expected if you were a teenager in the middle of the night.

"What color?" he asked her when they entered the spray paint aisle. She thought of the little portrait of him that she'd drawn in the stall.

"Purple." She reached up for the can, but the shelf was much too high for her. She shrunk back down like a defeated little kid. "I'm an elf, sorry."

He smiled widely at her and got the can his tall self.

Ten minutes later, they found themselves hanging out by the outskirts of what used to be a bridal shop. The brick was in tact, but someone had ripped the old sign half off so that it said _Minx Bou _minus the _tique. _The windows were boarded up with thin wood which would be tonight's canvas.

She swiped the can from his hands and began to shake it. How many times had she done this? The familiar rattle of paint and metal was comforting, strangely easing her nerves. This was something she actually knew how to do, unlike talking to Jace. She could probably even pretend that Simon was here with her, that he wasn't just stuck at home with his overbearing mother and sister, popping his prescriptions from a Pez dispenser and smoking too much medicinal marijuana. She shook her head slightly, putting herself back in the now, in this situation with the hot band guy. She knew he was watching her as she made her way over to the plywood. She started with a simple curved line, and tried not to breathe in the toxic smell too much by pulling her arm up to her mouth, breathing through the veil of her shirt.

When she'd finished the swooping lines of the flower, a large purple rose, she turned back to Jace. His eyes were glazed over with something, concentrated, but Clary couldn't imagine what he was thinking so hard about.

"Want to try?" she asked him, holding out the paint.

Jace still looked weird, staring up at her flower. She waited for a minute, but then he surprised her by coming forward and taking the can of paint from her hand.

He was about to press down on the nozzle when something stopped him. He lowered his arm, looking behind her with a suddenly alert glare. Clary found herself way too distracted by his proximity to question what he had stopped for. He smelled like liquor and cigarettes, the standard New Yorker smell, but there was something else underneath it, like there had been in his eyes. Maybe the most interesting thing about him was that he was like an untouched lake of secrets. She badly wanted to break the surface, to disturb the waters, and to maybe kiss him if she could. From this spot, she could reach up onto her tip-toes and just meet his face with her's...

"On the count of three, we run," he said.

"What?"

"One, two," and just before he said three, she whipped her head around and saw the approaching NYPD car. His hand locked around her wrist, but this time she welcomed it, allowing him to lurch her forward. The can of paint hit the ground with a clang as they got away. Suddenly, there was blue and red lights all around her, but no siren. They took off in a frenzy of feet hitting the pavement and heavy breathing, all the while Clary was practically blind, letting him drag her into alleys and streets, hopefully to safety. She didn't bother to look behind her, she only looked forward at Jace, who was faster with his spindly legs. She felt the adrenaline run around in her veins, pushing her to move her own short legs further. Eventually, they stopped when the clubbing district came back into view, though Clary didn't think that the lazy cop had actually bothered to follow them this far.

"Shit," she gasped. They both leaned over on their knees, fighting for air. When a bit of normalcy returned, when she caught her breath and the lights of the clubbing district started to feel safe, she found that he was laughing. She shook her head, elated.

Then it occurred to her that she knew who he was (not really), but he didn't know her yet.

"I'm Clary Fray," she decided to say, and she held out her hand.

"Jace." Though she had been repeating the name in her head for an hour now.

"Jace who?"

He took her hand in his, surprisingly lightly, shaking it as if it were a made of glass. A couple of drunk people stumbled to maneuver around them.

"Just Jace."

"You're a good lookout, Jace," she told him.

There silent pause that made Clary nervous. Jace took a step forward and touched her sleeve, but not her.

"Your rose was beautiful," he finally said. Clary blushed, despite her best efforts to remain cool.

She had to leave, it was getting to be last call hour and Jocelyn would have her by the skin of her neck when she got home. She looked at Jace as he leaned against the wall of the emptying club, and knew that no amount of nervousness or loneliness or fucking cancer would make her not want to get to know him. Taking out her sharpie, she reached for his hand and tried not to look him in the eyes. He let her scrawl her phone number on his skin and she nearly messed up because she was holding his hand and trying to examine all the lines and secrets of his palm as closely as possible. He had telltale musician calluses, but also scratches and old faded scars like a worker's hands. Before she could deduce anything more about him, he pulled away.

He left her with a wide cat grin, and she realized that he looked like a feral lion with his hair and his eyes. King of the jungle. King of the clubbing district.

_If this is the last night of my life, I wouldn't care,_ she thought.

But that thought immediately stung and burned the way a taboo subject does. The appointment was tomorrow, and the last night of her life might come sooner than expected.


	2. Two

Clary had once lived in a nice brownstone apartment that was her childhood home, where she could remember playing hide-and-seek in the stairwell and being shooed away by the downstairs tenants. One had been a witch, or so Clary had thought at the age of seven, because she read fortunes and her place always smelled like burning sage and other unknown herbs. She had loved the Brownstone, but now Jocelyn and Clary lived in a shabby apartment on the fifth floor of a building that sat above a butcher shop. The walls had not been washed in years, creating a permanent yellow tinge to every hallway. The people next door had loud sex, and the people above them had loud parties.

Of course, they had to downsize when she got sick. Jocelyn's job as a art therapist paid enough for the bills, but never enough for the other bills. The insurance and hospital bills that had accumulated to a nice, organized, but evil pile that she kept under her bed. Clary was never to ask her mother about money- that was a rule. She could remember asking her mother how much money they had when she was released after her first round of chemo. Jocelyn, who had been pushing her daughter's wheelchair out of the hospital, stopped and bent down to her level.

"You don't ever, ever, _ever_, worry yourself about that, you hear me?"

And Clary had heard her, so she nodded.

"And if you want something, if you want anything, tell me and I will get it for you, okay? I don't care how much it is."

Even at the age of thirteen, Clary had seen the fear in her mother's eyes. The desperation behind everything she did for her, the need to spoil Clary because she was still alive and she deserved it. Jocelyn could never hide her emotions very well. Needless to say, that was the last time she asked about money, and though her mother had told her she'd get whatever she wanted, she never asked her for a thing.

Clary made her way up the long flights of stairs until 14E came into view. Her mother had painted the door bright blue, like a sky, and it stood out against all the pale yellow and wood paneling. She didn't even have time to twist the key into the lock before the blue door lurched open.

"Where the hell were you? You should have called me, do you even know what time it is?"

Her mother was dressed in her work clothes still, which told Clary that she still hadn't wound down, poured a glass of wine, put on her silk pajamas and her records, and unfurled herself on the couch like she usually did.

"I'm sorry, I lost track," Clary said, sounding feeble. She kicked off her sneakers and left them at the front door, welcoming the worn carpet against her feet.

Jocelyn hovered around her daughter as she went to the fridge, pulled out a bottle of water and some leftovers. She brushed down Clary's hair with her fingers and sighed.

"It's just that we have to get up early tomorrow."

"I know, Mom."

"And I don't want Dr. Franz thinking that you're staying out all night. You've been so healthy the past couple of- what is this?" her mother had grabbed her wrist rather hard, broke off mid sentence and pointed to her sleeve.

A bit of purple paint had sprayed on the edge of the long T-shirt, unmistakably splattered like spray paint. Clary mentally kicked herself for leaving evidence. She tried to play it off.

"It's just a shirt, Mom, all of them are covered in paint."

Jocelyn gave her a fierce look, cocking an eyebrow up. She rubbed the purple spot again and a bit of powder came off it. She was so busted.

"This is spray paint, isn't it?" When Clary said nothing, her mother let go of the sleeve and let her hand drop back to her side. Clary pulled on the sleeve nervously, trying to bunch the stained fabric into her hand, as if that would erase what just happened.

"It's not such a big deal. Why does it have to be such a big deal?" she asked in a very quiet voice. She knew the lecture that her mother was about to explode with by heart. How many times had she found Clary and Simon's secret stash of paint cans in her room? How many times did Jocelyn come home livid because she'd walked past an old brick wall on the way home and recognized her daughter's handiwork?

"It's a big deal, Clary, Jesus! How many times do I have to tell you, how many times do _the doctors _have to tell you, how toxic that shit is?"

"I know, I-"

"You know, do you? Then why do you keep doing it, huh? Not even to mention that you could get arrested!"

"Mom, I'm not going to get ar-"

"Do you really want to have destruction of property on your record? What about school? How is that going to look?"

Clary started to walk away. She didn't want to get into this, not the school thing, not tonight. Every time she thought of college, her stomach knotted and began to ache from the weight of her emotions. College was futuristic and Clary wanted nothing to do with planning for her future. Of course, she couldn't tell her mother this, it would only hurt her. Really, she just wanted to lock herself in her room and think about Jace some more. She kept picturing his hand in hers for that brief moment, how easily the ink of her number had tattooed his skin.

But Jocelyn followed her to her room.

"Clary, please do not walk away when I'm trying to have a discussion with you."

Clary sat on her bed and rested the leftovers on her lap. Since she'd gone into remission, all they ever ate was leeks and bok choy and kale in some sort of a salad, stir fry, or smoothie. Of course, Jocelyn didn't know about the burger joints that Simon and her often visited, whenever Simon could get an appetite.

"It's discussed, okay? I get it." She tried to sound finite, but she was always weaker at speech than her mother, who told great stories and articulated herself properly.

"What is it with you tonight?" she asked. Then, Jocelyn seemed to understand, seemed to remember that tomorrow was in fact a big, big day. "Is it because you're scared about the results tomorrow?" she asked tentatively. It was amazing how her mother could go from vicious momma bear to warm and soft like _that_, and Clary would still crawl into her arms, even if she had been yelling at her a minute ago.

"I just…" she began, not knowing how to word it. "I had a lot of fun tonight. I know you hate it when I paint-" she started, but her mother tried to stop her and specify that she didn't hate it when she painted, just that she used buildings as canvases. Clary went on overtop of her anyway. "But it was the most fun I've had in a while."

"Were you with Simon?" Jocelyn asked. She could hear the concern in that, too, since Simon was going through another round of chemo and certainly wasn't in the position to be tagging buildings in the middle of the night. She shook her head.

"No, just…a new friend." She didn't really want to tell her mother about Jace, she didn't want her to assume that Jace was a bad influence, and she didn't want to have to explain that she'd met him in a pub, that he was a musician.

"From the concert? Who?"

"I just…I hung out with the band." It wasn't exactly false, but it sounded only slightly better than _I hung out with this guy from a band. _

"Clary, you're not-"

"Mom, please. We just tagged a wall and walked around. Don't worry, okay? I'm fine. Everything's fine."

Her mother crossed her arms, then uncrossed them. She was leaning against the banister, eyeing Clary up and down like she was a strange, new enigma. It wasn't really like Clary to go hanging around with bands. Simon used to be in a band, but they never left the confines of Eric's basement. Clary was getting exhausted, trying to lie her way around this night and trying to prepared herself for tomorrow. As much as she told herself that she would take the results the same way she always did, she couldn't help but feel the little pulse of fear deep inside her as it jumped to life like a secondary heartbeat. It was the same feeling before every appointment, of anticipation and pessimism.

She'd been in and out of remission before, but somehow, this time was different. She almost didn't want to know if the cancer was back or not. Ignorance is bliss.

"I just want to go to bed now. I'll see you in the morning. Sorry for keeping you up," she said without looking her mother in the eyes. Jocelyn could see through any mask Clary put on, so she tucked into her leftover veggies and tried to will her mother away. After a moment, Jocelyn said,

"Goodnight, baby," and shut the door.

Clary stood up in her empty room and began to take her shirt off. When she was in front of the mirror, she inspected her arms closely. There was a map of small scars, the endless needles that had been inserted in every place where veins lay. She twisted her body and looked at her lower back, where a few even bigger scars sat. Places where they had collected bone marrow to sample. She shuddered just remembering it. They have to keep you awake for the procedure, and it hurt like nothing else from the pressure and the piercing. Clary stepped away from the mirror and stripped of her pants as well.

The first diagnosis was when she was twelve. They tested and tested, all of them a blur of appointments in her head. Child psychologists helped Jocelyn explain to her what Leukemia was and how it effected Clary's body, and the types of things they were going to have to do to her. All the poking and prodding and waiting and her mother crying and the visits from grandparents and the school sending the card that everyone in her 7th grade class signed- all of those things built up in her mind and really formed into one day that Clary could remember perfectly. It was the day she realized that she had cancer, that she was dying. It was the day they told her that chemo would be the best option. Clary remembered that because she remembered how Luke's friend Mrs. Alcave had cancer and had chemo, and all her hair had fallen out and then she'd died.

And losing her hair, for some silly reason, had been the worst.

Looking in the mirror now, Clary's flaming red hair was longer than she'd seen it in a while, showing almost two years of growth. She ran her fingers through it to where it ended, a bit past her shoulders. A year and a half of remission. If she kept it going for five years, they would call her cured. Just five years.

She sat on the edge of her bed half naked, slowly filling with panic. She wanted to talk to Simon.

Taking out her phone, she quickly dialled his number. It didn't matter that it was late, he would probably be up with nausea all night, and even so he would always answer her calls. It was a thing between them, since they'd become friends in the children's hospital, that they always answered each other's calls, knocks, and carrier pigeons, even if they were literally dying. They both had Leukemia, they both had single mothers, and they both skipped in and out of remission.

"Good morning," he answered. Simon's voice was shaky, he was probably exhausted, but he tried to make it sound like he was chipper.

"How you feeling?"

"Like I am walking on sunshine, how about you?" His humour never wavered.

"Honestly?"

"No, lie to me."

She sighed. It was hard for her to talk about being sick. It was hard for her to even say the words, _I have cancer, _though it's what all the damn psychologists kept telling her to do. Maybe it was because she was always convincing herself that she was fine. She would wake up in the morning and feel hungry, happy, normal, with a pulse, little under eye baggage, and she felt healthy. It was a sham, thought, because somewhere deep in her veins, the cancer could be hiding like a curse.

"I'm scared. Like a little baby."

Simon didn't say anything for a minute. She heard the toilet flush, but it wasn't a big deal. They both had seen each other's bodily fluids come up in every which way possible over the past four years, and privacy was no longer a privilege when she was diagnosed.

"I'm not scared. I've got faith that your steadfast dwarf genes will pull through."

She laughed at that, and it was nice. This is why she loved Simon.

"I know you wouldn't lie to me," she started.

"Not exactly true. I did tell you that I watched Spice World when you lent it to me. But lets face it, Scary Spice _is _a bit too scary."

She decided to ignore him on that one.

"Do you think I could make it to five?" she asked, nearly a whisper. Her heart began to thump a little wildly in her chest. She didn't like the way it sounded- five years. It felt too long, like her body was in this heavyweight race against time and it was only just past the quarter mark.

"I think you're gonna make it to eighty-seven, like my Bubba. And you'll be just as wrinkly and miserable," Simon said.

Clary laughed, but didn't let Simon know that she had started to cry. She wiped at her wet cheeks a little furiously. Before she could say anything else, she heard Simon retch a bit, and the sound of what could only be puke falling into the toilet.

"I'll let you go. Get well soon, Simon." It was their little joke, their bit of childhood cynicism and disdain for those stupid balloons people always gave them.

"Get well soon," he managed before signing off.

Clary tucked herself into bed and pulled the sheets tightly around her. Talking to Simon always made her feel better, but like a drug, it wore off eventually and she was left with the same feelings as before. Her mother was probably stirring in the next room, hardly able to sleep as well. The anticipation throbbed inside her, restless and real. She needed another distraction.

She looked down at her wrist, the one they'd poke at some more soon, and saw a bit of that purple paint. It had leaked through from the flower to her shirt and to her skin, relentlessly. More than anything, she wished that she would get the chance to go tagging with Jace again, maybe show him the ropes, the good places to go. She wondered if he would ever call. Was it even possible for someone like her to get to know him? He looked like he belonged in clubs with careless cool people, writing music and falling in love with supermodels, not with the weird cancer girl who couldn't even order a beer properly.

She looked out of her window which led to the fire escape. It was easy to sneak out, but she only ever felt the need to hide tagging from Jocelyn. She used to stick all her cans in her backpack and slip out of the window silently. It might have been a strange hobby, but Clary loved it. She was leaving a print on the city, a real one that people walked past on their way to work, not just some sketchbook full of drawings no one would ever see.

She didn't know why, but she wanted Jace to be a part of that. She had only met him tonight, but already he'd been seeded inside her thoughts, as deep rooted as her blood cancer. She wanted to paint the town red with him, she wanted the two of them to make some kind of mark on the city that said _I was here, and I was here with _him.

_If I make it to five years, _she thought, _I will fall in love with him. I'll do everything. _


	3. Three

Clary's eyes were beginning to ache, not because she was holding back tears, but because the bright lights in the hospital were bothering her. They had always bothered her. When she used to come in for her chemo, she always asked the nurses (if they were the nice ones) to turn off the lights so that she could sit in the dark with her IV drip. She and her mother were in Dr. Franz's office, a large, white room with a view that overlooked the Brooklyn Bridge. There was a stack of paper and a computer, each held all her medical files, from the time she was first admitted when she was twelve until now. The most recent test was in Dr. Franz's hands. His hands were steady, soft, and had examined her more than once. Jocelyn's hands were shaking.

"Okay," her mother kept saying. "Okay. So what's the next step?"

Dr. Franz closed the file that held the test results.

The test results that showed cancerous cells in her bone marrow.

Her race against the five year mark was suddenly over, leaving her panting in the middle of the track, wondering where the hell all the spectators had gone to.

"Clary's going to have to go back on the donor list. We'll start her on the first round of chemotherapy…" He went on, but Clary had stopped listening. Her mother was nodding her head, asking questions, eyes ever so slightly widened. Maybe Jocelyn hadn't expected this. Clary didn't know what she was expecting.

Instead she looked out the window at the Brooklyn Bridge. So many people were moving down there, all the cars and people flowing like a healthy bloodstream. It looked like the bridge was alive. Clary's finger's itched to draw it the way it was right now, at morning rush hour, so full of life, so opposite of this white room which was still and frozen in this tragic moment. She'd give anything to get the hell out of there.

She noticed that Dr. Franz had tone in his voice that was sort of relaxed, like he wasn't in the least bit surprised by Clary's test results. It wasn't that she didn't like Dr. Franz, he was good enough, she supposed. It was just that she'd come to associate him with bad news, and not seeing him for a year and a half had been great. Sitting in this room, she felt like she was thirteen all over again, in the middle of a storm of doctors and treatments. She thought of her long hair and touched it. Good things were never meant to last.

For the second time in her life, Clary felt like she was dying. Perhaps she'd been dying this whole time, and only now it was evident that the process of dying was actually going to effect her. Dying had been easier to handle as a kid because she had trusted everything her mother said, truly believed she'd be perfectly fine if she kept getting chemo and the marrow transplants. When she was younger, she had no philosophical questions to ask, nothing to compare her life to. Now that she was older, the world seemed to be laid out in front of her like a map, and she could see everyone else moving forward, and she could almost pick her feet up and move on. But she was stuck in this office. Stuck on her little corner of the map. Why did she avoid talk of the future so much? It was because her future was fluid, and it just kept getting snatched away from her by Dr. Fucking Franz.

She kept stiff and rigid until the doctor gave them her next appointment cards, a couple of pages worth of more prescriptions that she would have to add to her daily pill regimens. She'd be going through prep for chemotherapy and starting it next week, she'd have to come and be given an IV which would add to her ever-growing scar tissue. Almost immediately, Jocelyn wrote it all down in her daybook. Watching her mother as she collected herself and shook the doctor's hand, Clary was nervous, as if Jocelyn was an unstable chemical mixture that had just been shaken up.

They left to brave the hallways, the walls of which were covered in finger paintings and success stories. All children's wards were the same. Sterile, an obvious clinical décor, but with the ghosts of childish things; toys in the waiting areas, teddy bear wallpaper bordering the middle of the white walls.

She couldn't think of anything to say to Jocelyn. _I'm not worried, Mom, _she thought, but that was a lie. Clary was already beginning to panic about the bone marrow and how long she'd have to wait for a matching donor. She could say, _I think we'll get lucky, _but really, Clary didn't believe in luck. Instead, she said nothing and in the elevator ride down, Jocelyn put her arm around Clary's middle as a small sign of support. She didn't think Jocelyn could say anything either. Raging disappointment had just come up out of nowhere like a tsunami and wiped them out. What was there to say?

Clary looked in the reflection that the shiny elevator doors made. She looked a lot like her mother like this- when the image was just murky enough to obscure their faces. They were both short and they both held themselves the same way, though Clary was much skinnier than Jocelyn. She would only get thinner now. Her hair and Jocelyn's was the real resemblance. Red as passion, thick, always doing something unruly. Clary let her sight linger on the reflection until the doors opened and a sick boy and his mother wheeled in.

She was getting the distinct feeling that her mother needed to be alone. She kept her hand around her middle, but she had a slightly detached look about her that Clary knew well. Usually when Jocelyn became emotional about something, she'd go excuse herself to do some kind of non-existent task, but there was no way that Jocelyn was going to willingly leave her side right now. They just carried on out of the hospital without words, and a hopelessness began to settle in between them.

Clary's body ached from last night, from the running. Though she had gained some muscle over the past year, she could feel her body getting weaker again. Maybe that was another symptom she'd been ignoring. Her limbs ached like she'd run for miles and miles, pins and needles in her feet. She would only get weaker, only get slower from now on, so she guessed that it was a feeling she'd have to get used to. Still. she walked slowly out of the hospital's lobby and winced a bit, hoping that Jocelyn wasn't picking up on her abnormal gait. She hardly approved of her going out last night at all, and Clary couldn't see Jocelyn being thrilled that she was chased through Manhattan by the cops, especially considering her test results.

Luke was waiting by the curb for them with his truck, but he was standing outside pretending to check the air in the tires. He didn't look very good, he looked like he hadn't slept. Luke always had that sort of dishevelled way about him, like he had just got finished doing something physically exerting, though she'd only ever seen him lift boxes at the book store. When Clary got closer, she saw that he hadn't shaved, that he'd even forgotten his glasses. Jocelyn and him exchanged a look as soon as they paused in front of the truck, but they said nothing for a moment. Really, unless Jocelyn and her had come out smiling, there was no need to clarify what had just happened in that hospital. They were all used to this dance of bad news. Awkwardly, Clary found herself standing in front of Luke, also trying to think of something to say, but coming up short.

"No dice, eh?" he said, finally. Clary laughed in spite of herself. If her life was a betting game, she was in the hole about three million dollars.

"Not this time. Chemo next week." She could have thrown in some kind of sarcastic comment like, _yay me, _or _can't wait, _but the whole situation, the whole silence that kept going on and on seemed bitter enough without her anger.

Luke's eyes tried to look sympathetic, but he was coming off as defeated. Clary slid out of her mother's tenuous hold and over to the passenger side of the truck. This truck was a very prominent part of her childhood. It was the vehicle that took her to all those appointments when her mother refused to ride the subway with a sick child, it was the vehicle that drove her and Simon around when they got free time away from hospitals and tutors. It always smelled the same, too, like peppermint and old books. She climbed into the passenger side and waited for her mother and Luke to finish whatever quiet conversation they were having. She tried to listen, but all she could make out was Luke saying,

"It's nothing we haven't beaten before, Jo."

In her room. Clary bit on her tongue, trying to see if she could draw blood. Once, when she was younger, her and Simon had pricked themselves with a little thumbtack and tasted their blood. They had to spend long stretches of boredom in the hospital, so they did everything under the sun to pass the time. They were trying to see if they could taste the cancer or not. Simon said he thought it would taste like garbage or something equally as gross, but it was just blood. Metallic and boring blood.

A familiar song pulled her out of the memory, and she let go of her tongue.

It was a text from a number she didn't recognize and it said,

_Come to Pandemonium at midnight. _

Her heart missed a painful beat. She realized that she'd been secretly waiting for this all day. She'd spent the afternoon in her room with this impatient feeling. It was strange of her to feel this way because she had confirmation now, that the cancer had grown without her knowing, like some kind of weed that kept coming back. Could she just dig her claws into her blood and rip it out, rip out its roots? It was always the mystery that got to her, the constant wondering. She had been sitting with this feeling like something was supposed to happen for a year and a half, and today it finally happened, but she was unsatisfied.

She dissected the text, read each word carefully and considering everything. The only person who knew her well enough to text her was Simon, or maybe Hodge to let her know that a lesson was cancelled, which left only one hopeful possibility; Jace. Of course she was waiting around for him. She felt like a love stuck school girl. Maybe it was unhealthy, like some kind of worship that made the feminist in her itch uncomfortably, but Clary thought it was just interest. She was interested in him, wanted to know more.

Jocelyn had locked herself in her room with apparent "homework from the office", and would stay there all night, but Clary knew that was just another one of the non-existent tasks that required her to be alone so that she could cry, or not, or do whatever it was the Jocelyn did to get by. Clary didn't like to think about what happened behind closed doors too much. There was enough to worry about when she could see it.

The clock said 11:03, which would leave her only just enough time to catch the metro to the part of town where she knew Club Pandemonium was. She walked past it enough, and it was clear in her mind because there was always such a mix of color outside the building. Kids in costumes, leather, fairy wings, and elaborate makeup. She'd never been inside, but always wanted to go. The lure of the eccentricity was powerful. And now Jace, the one other thing that was luring her out of her shitty apartment, would be there.

She was going. It was final.

In her closet, she put on an old green coat that used to belong to her mother because it was the most colourful thing she owned, and a black dress that she wore to a hospital kid's dance the year previously. The dances that they occasionally put on in the ward were kind of pathetic, full of ill kids who wouldn't dance or ill kids who couldn't. Simon and her always brought their handheld videogames and parked it on the middle of the floor with the complimentary punch that no one spiked.

She felt telltale signs of heartbreak as she let down her hair and shook it. _Don't think about, _she told herself, _not tonight. _

Clary left through the fire escape, abandoning all her reason and caution in her room with her pillbox.

The subway car was already full of half-drunk people on their way to a different club, and too-drunk people on their way home. She was sandwiched between a couple who looked like they were getting to third base, and a man in a nice suit who was clutching onto his briefcase like Clary would try to steal it. Clary touched the back of her neck nervously. The kissing couple was making her think more and more of the possibilities of tonight. She imagined dancing with Jace, getting close enough to smell his scent like she had been that night at the _Minx Bou. _

When the car slid to a stop, she was the first one out the door. She made her way out of the underground slowly until she came up for a breath of thick, late night Manhattan air. She was going to start appreciating things like smells. She was going to remember everything that she smelled, everything she touched, heard, and felt. She walked steadily past the people of the streets, and with each passing face, she closed her eyes and envisioned them again. Maybe she'd try to draw everybody, everywhere.

Pandemonium had a pulse. She could feel it shaking through the building and moving into the pavement of the street beside it. Her own heart started to beat along with whatever strange house music was playing inside. She stood slightly separated from the crowded line, her eyes moving frantically over every costume and every couple, searching.

But he came from behind her.

"I didn't know if you knew where this place was."

His voice was omniscient, like it was coming from above her. If she looked up, she wouldn't have been surprised to see his sharp, handsome face hovering up there with the stars. She didn't look up though, she turned around and saw that he was really there, really just a person like her, but he was godly beautiful.

"I knew where it was," she answered.

Jace seemed satisfied by all this. He smiled widely, the lion smile that she had been thinking about for what seemed like forever. His hair was the same as it was last night, long and looking like it had been pushed back several times. He wore a t-shirt, but didn't shiver despite the temperature. His jeans were old, ripped, worn and loved the way most of Clary's clothes were. But then again, Clary had a penchant for things like old clothes, hand-me-downs, and childhood toys. He took her hand, saying,

"Let's go."

She sucked in a steadying breath while he wasn't looking. As they walked toward the club, she was unable to wrap her head around the reality of the situation. How was it that yesterday she had been standing below the stage, fantasizing about the hot guitarist and now she was here, feeling his hand overtop of hers? She thought they'd join the line, but Jace moved to the front and put on this big, happy face for the bouncer. The bouncer was a tall, broad black guy with neat dreads that had been cut to about his shoulder. Jace held onto Clary's hand so that they were joined, so that she seemed with him.

"Vinny, what's going on?"

"Jace, my man, how's the moms?" Vinny the bouncer asked. Clary hadn't thought about Jace's mom or who she could be. To her, Jace seemed like the type who didn't live anywhere, maybe just in the sky, and he materialized out of nowhere to play shows and sweep unsuspecting girls off their feet.

"She's great, how's the girl?" Jace said, throwing his arm down so that they could shake hands warmly.

"The same, you know how it is." As he said this, he unclipped the rope and stepped aside so that Jace and Clary could enter.

"You're a good man, Vinny," he said over his shoulder. He didn't let go of her hand once they were inside.

The club was rightfully called Pandemonium. All at once, the force of bodies dancing, the music, the people who looked like creatures- it hit her in a pleasant frenzy. It was like one great, big, glorious freak show of fun. Clary couldn't stop herself from smiling like a dork as they pressed themselves further into the mass of people. She had never been to a place like this, this was the kind of club she used to imagine with Simon in the hospital, the kind of place that she fantasized her teen self would go to.

A boy with blue hair passed her by, and before she could tell him no, he'd pressed a little bag of pills into her hand. She tried to signal him to give them back, but Jace was pulling her along and the boy had disappeared somewhere else. She let the baggie fall to the floor without another thought.

Suddenly they stopped in the middle of the dance floor, and Jace pulled her around so fast, she thought she left her mind behind her and just her body slammed against his. He was quick to pull her into a slow dance, though the music was fast and endless. He moved her in a circle, his feet never stumbling over hers.

"I don't dance much," he confessed in her ear. It was strange to hear his voice above the music, to feel his breath. She was ultra aware of everything, his closeness, the weight of his hand on her hip.

"Neither do I."

Clary did something she wouldn't have normally done if she hadn't been told that she was sick today. Perhaps it was like those stupid things that people said on the internet, _you only live once, _but she felt the need to squeeze out every little drop of perfection from the night. She reached up and touched Jace's hair. It was soft, exquisite, and soon she was running her fingers through it with ease. He didn't look that surprised, just calm as he lifted his hand from where it had been resting and ran it through her own hair. She could feel the follicles breathing when his fingers touched the curls. He grazed her scalp softly. It was sensational, like the way her mother used to do it, only it was a him and he had this smile on his face that made her want to kiss it off.

Their heads were farther apart now, and they both looked kind of funny with their hands caught in each other's hair. She laughed and let go of the strands in her fingers, moving in closer so she could shout in his ear. He kept his hand in her hair.

"Great hair," she said.

"Speak for yourself," he shouted back.

She knew it was stupid to ruin this moment, but her thoughts automatically went to what would happen in the next few weeks when she went through radiation. The hair in his hands would start to fall off until all that was left was a patchy red mess. She tensed and Jace must have sensed her sudden discomfort, and he let go of her hair. Without his hand there, it felt a little lifeless.

But she didn't want him to quit touching her, so she pressed herself even closer to him and swayed along, opting to close her eyes and enjoy his scent.

"So.." he started. "What else can we deface tonight?"

_A/N- Thank you great people for the feedback, you're wonderful. I'll try to keep the chapters coming. _


	4. Four

"Here, do something," she told him.

Clary gave Jace the white spray paint, passing him the torch. She had already detailed the face on the wall, made the eyes almond shaped and dilated. She was trying to remember the face of the boy who had been sharing his stash with the whole club earlier, and for the most part, she'd managed to capture him here. Part of her wondered where that little bag of pills had gone to, if someone had found it and put it in their mouth. Maybe she should have held onto it. She could have hid it somewhere, for a rainy day, for if she was in the valley of the shadow of death and wanted to know what real ecstasy was like.

But this was pretty close to ecstasy, being pretty close to him.

He approached the portrait like it was wild animal, slowly, with the paint lowered at his hip. Clary pressed her fingers to her lips to warm them, and watching him was making her want to smile, so she hid behind her hands. He spread his legs a bit and in a quick movement, pressed down on the nozzle. He swiped white onto the boy's hair, it was stark against the blue. He drew swirls, long lines that wiggled and curved out from the boy's head madly. He stopped and ran his hands through his own hair, looked back at Clary, and waved her over to him. _He's a natural, _she thought. Somehow, it didn't surprise her that he could paint. He could probably do anything.

She still had the can of black, so as he drew skeletal lines across the boys lips, Clary fixed one of the eyes with reaching eyelashes. When he was finished drawing a plume of steam blowing out of the ear, Clary added a long streak of water coming out of the other. Jace laughed and then he drew a heart in the middle of the boy's nose.

In the end, it was a distorted face, neater in places Clary had painted, and cruder, more animated where Jace had added. It took up most of the space on the crumbing brick wall, some old apartment building they stumbled upon.

"We're weapons of mass destruction," Jace said.

"I guess so."

Clary had never thought of herself as that. Paintings were growth, they made the world grow. But someone had laid this brick once, to be red and plain, not to be covered in someone's weird artwork. Perhaps she _was _a weapon of mass destruction, and she was tearing up the city with her paint, and her long hair, and this great looking guy. She felt a surge of joy, just to be standing here with him.

"We should get out of here," she said, glancing around. There were no cops that she could see, but there was also no way she'd be able to handle long distance running like last night- her limbs still pulsed every time she took a step.

"What next?" Jace asked.

Clary felt strange, like she didn't know what to say, and then she wished that they had someone here to laugh with, to cut the tension. Someone like Simon.

An idea came to her, and maybe it was just her good mood, but she wanted her best friend. She thought of Simon, at home, with his video games and his mother who worried herself grey, and she missed him suddenly.

Last year, when Simon had been given a brief grace period between chemo treatments, he had told her that he loved her. She had blushed as much as she could, given her pale state, but couldn't help but kiss him because he was so cute and so healthy. Dating him was a weird few weeks, during which time they grew more and more awkward. Then his grace period ended and he got sicker, while Clary got healthier. At some point, they just stopped trying to kiss and resumed their normal friendship without ever really talking about it, just both knowing that they were better that way. This was the extent of her dating life, and maybe that's why she felt so superhuman here with Jace, because it was progress in her pathetic little life.

Simon was dating Mia now, the volunteer nurse assistant who always hung out in Oncology because that's where the hot doctors were, apparently. She had no idea how Simon had managed to seduce her, and he hadn't given her many details. Mia was curvy and often dressed up as a candy striper, and said that she had "a thing for Jewish guys". Whenever the three of them had hung out together, Clary spent most of the time drawing while they played video games and made out. Whatever had been between Clary and Simon was long dead, but sometimes she felt an alien twang of jealousy. She imagined that Simon would feel the same when he saw Jace, for some reason.

"I know where we can get some really potent medical weed," she finally said. Maybe it wasn't a good idea, maybe it was wrong. Maybe Jace would see the cancer and get weirded out, and she would have to tell him that she was sick, too. For some reason, she didn't want that. Did she really want to scare the guy off so soon? One day she'd would have been to him this normal artist he was hanging out with, and the next she would be the sick girl he felt sorry for. She wanted to hold onto normal for as long as possible.

Jace's face was splayed with a great smile, all teeth and humour.

"Hell yeah."

She smiled to herself on the inside and got out her cell phone. In a flurry of button pressing, she texted Simon.

**Coming to drag you out of your cave. **

**Take your pills and bring your stash. **

"Let's go." She stuffed her phone back into her pocket and walked ahead, anxious about everything, but strangely at place. Jace abandoned the empty black paint and she heard it clatter and roll on the pavement. She still had the blue paint, so she tucked inside to green jacket. He caught up to her in only a few long strides.

They were still in the relatively quiet suburban neighbourhood, only three blocks away from where Simon lived, in one of the more urban Jewish districts of New York, where you could always find a gorgeous abandoned synagogue to tag and the best bagels in the city. Simon's mother was very religious, always taking him to see the Rabbi for "spiritual guidance", but Simon himself always acted ambivalent toward his Jewish heritage. He just wanted to ease his mother's mind as much as he could, so he humoured her with the God stuff. His dad was dead and he was all she had left, he'd said.

They passed through the silent street, and Clary felt that she should whisper.

"How long have you played music?" she decided to ask quietly. She didn't want it to seem like small talk; she was really curious.

Jace shrugged.

"I got a guitar from my old foster dad when I was eight."

_Foster dad? _She mentally took the scrap of information and blew it up to a higher magnification. He was a foster kid? She tried to quickly think of what that could mean in terms of who he actually was, which was still a mystery to her.

"And you've drawn forever." His hands went deep into his pockets, the wind picked up.

"Yeah, but don't all kids draw scribble when they're little?"

Jace shrugged again, saying,

"We didn't have many crayons lying around."

Clary wondered how poor he was, or had been. She didn't want to dare ask him, though. She got the feeling that it was a thick subject. It would be just like her to ruin a good thing.

"You're not so bad at it, you know?" she told him.

"At scribbling?"

"Well, you didn't spray the paint into your eyes, at least." She laughed, she bumped his shoulder with hers.

They were silent for a few steps. Clary nestled into her coat a little tighter as the chill bit her, and the cool metal of the paint can pressed against her side. Then he said,

"I can tell you've been drawing forever. You're good. I bet you see everything like a picture."

She felt bashful, wary of compliments. They were rare, except for the fake pleasantries that nurses always felt the need to spend on her. _You're looking great today, kiddo. _

"I bet you can hear everything like a song. I've never heard anyone play like you," she said, emphasising the _you. _"I don't think you're just in it for the fame."

"Oh, the _fame. _I didn't realize that we had a fan base." She saw him roll his eyes a little.

"Who knows, maybe I'll start the fan club," she said, smiling.

"Rock bands don't have fan clubs, they have groupies."

Clary blushed as thoughts of naked chicks, cocaine, and tour buses flooded her mind. She almost walked right past Simon's house, trying not to look up, but she noticed the hand and footprints indented into the cement. Simon had no clue whose hand and footprints they were, but the initials _E.S _were engraved next to the hands, and they had always been outside his house.

She stopped and Jace did with her. She took out her cell phone again and fired out another haste text.

**Rapunzel, let down your hair. **

She looked up at the window that was Simon's bedroom and waited. Once, she had tried to be movie quality and threw rocks at his window to get his attention, but ended up breaking the glass. His mom had screamed and yelled about it, but Simon took the heat for her, like a real gentleman.

The door opened, and the flash of movement brought her eyes back down to the front, where Simon was coming from.

"My hair is falling out, you insensitive asshole."

Simon strode over to them, floppy hipster hat covering his shaved head, and two sweaters zipped up over his _Zelda _t-shirt. Jace sniggered, having no clue what the discourse was for that remark. Simon and her were nothing if not diligent cynics, poking as much fun out of cancer as they could, and bald jokes were not above them. She decided to change the subject, though, not wanting to fall into cancer talk so soon.

"Want to be delinquents?" she said, pulling out the can of paint.

Simon looked from Jace to the paint in momentary confusion. He probably hadn't expect her to have someone with her, especially someone who looked like this guy. She introduced them,

"This is Simon, he's got a medical marijuana license," she said. "And this is Jace…he's in a band."

"That's all you can come up with? _He's in a band?_" Jace said, with a look that could only be described as sly.

"What about me? You're just here for my pot, aren't you?" Simon said with mock hurt.

Clary held out the paint can to him.

"And your mad skills."

Simon looked pensive for a moment or two, in contemplation. Then he reached into his pocket, retrieving an expertly rolled joint, and stuck it in his mouth. He took the paint can, shrugging.

"Alright."

They ended up at one of the usual places, an old synagogue that had become a midnight hangout at some point. The Star of David hung precariously from the threshold, and the doors groaned when Simon tried to shimmy them open. All three of them leaned their weight onto the door until it budged. Sometimes, homeless people crashed in here, but Clary surveyed the inside and saw no menacing shapes hiding behind anything.

Jace looked up at the high ceiling, at the beams that were haphazardly rotting above them. Bats slept here in the daytime, but at night the Synagogue was eerily empty and quiet. The silence was disturbed only by the sound of Simon's lighter flicking and the sharp intake of breath that followed. He muttered something in Hebrew and blew a large plume of smoke up to the rafters.

Jace chuckled deep in his throat, coming to join Clary where she stood, facing the far wall. There was a mural there that she'd done when she was fourteen. It was her attempt at the Mona Lisa, when she was going through a pretentious art history phase. Of course, being done in spray paint and by the hands of her fourteen year old self, Mona Lisa was more edgy and made of hard lines. Her long black hair came down in sharp spikes, and her eyes were less detailed, but still followed you. Clary had replaced her robes with tattooed bare arms folded and a leather bra. At the bottom was her signature, Clary's tag; a weird twisting, sharp, eye-like rune that she'd seen in one of her mom's textbooks. It had always stuck with her for some reason.

"You did this?" Jace asked, pointing at Mona.

"Better than the original, in my opinion," Simon chimed in. He gave Clary the joint, which she pretended to smoke, and handed it to Jace.

Jace's eyes were fixed as he took an experienced, long drag. He was intimidating the hell out of Clary. Why was he so focused?

Simon tucked his face into his elbow protectively, and he started painting something farther away from the mural, grabbing her attention away from Jace. While Clary liked to draw pictures, Simon was all about social commentary. In blue, he'd written,

_Milk and honey or soy and splenda?_

"We had a run in with the cops yesterday," Clary decided to say.

"Remember that time when I got caught at the old Duncan Donuts on 8th?" Simon shook the paint and passed it off to Jace, who crouched low and started painting waves that came up out of the floor and bordered the bottom.

"You were lucky they didn't find the quarter of weed under your hat," she said.

"I played the cancer card, they had to let me go."

She nervously watched for Jace's reaction when Simon said it, but either he didn't care, or was making an effort to look like he didn't care. It was pretty obvious to everyone that Simon was sick. She wondered if people could tell yet that she was. Maybe not yet, but soon, she would have bags under her eyes and hats and scarves instead of her current mane. People would look at her for a second longer than they should on the street. Then it occurred to her that she still hadn't told Simon about her appointment yet. Everyone in the room with her thought she was healthy, that she was normal. It was almost enough for her to believe it herself. Almost, but not quite.

"I think I'm gonna crash. It's not decent for a poor boy like me to be out all night," Simon said. She knew he was probably tired, probably worn out from the short walk here.

Clary promised to call him as he handed her the nearly empty spray paint. He gave Jace a salute before he left. And when he did leave, it got suddenly quiet and suddenly warm. She inhaled the smell of burning weed and mustiness from the untreated wood, and cautiously turned back to Jace. She expected him to ask her something about Simon, something about his sickness. He didn't though, and she was glad, because if he had, she probably wouldn't be able to stop talking. She'd probably have to tell him who she was. Death walking. A sick girl. She realized that he knew as much about her as she did about him. Why weren't they chatting about their lives, their parents, whatever? It wasn't normal, but she didn't care that much. It wasn't even awkward. He didn't feel that much like a stranger anymore.

Jace came over to stand beside her. Outside, she heard distant sirens and normal sounds. Inside, she heard him breathing, abnormal and new.

Bravely, she reached out her hand. For the two seconds that it hovered there, in between them, she felt fear unparalleled to anything else. _He doesn't want to hold my hand, _she thought, alarms sounding in her head. Then, when she was about to slink away into the shadows, she felt him take it, she felt the fingers that she'd come to admire so much.

"I have to go. But I'll see you soon," he told her.

She looked up at him through the thin smoke of what was left of Simon's joint. He let it fall to the ground, but his eyes didn't leave her. His eyes were really fucking something, weren't they? Something struck her, deep inside like a gong.

Then she kissed him, simply because she could.

_A/N- I don't really know much about New York's medical marijuana laws, but for story purposes, weed for everyone, okay?_


	5. Five

She had never thought much of mouths or lips. Sure, she had drawn lips and studied them for their shadows and highlights, but she didn't think much of her own lips or of anyone else's. Clary figured this was because she had only ever experienced her own mouth, which often tasted foul because of the vicious things her stomach did during chemo. And of course, the few kisses she had shared with Simon had to be counted, but he always had tasted like tic-tacs, and Clary got the impression that he had eaten a lot more of them for the duration of their "relationship."

If only Clary had known what putting your mouth on someone (who wasn't her best friend) else's mouth was like, what the taste of a mouth could be like, she suspected that she'd have run around kissing boys a long time ago. Slight pressure and slight wetness, a sweetness almost shocking, like rotting fruit. Sweet in a sick way. Clary had dreamed about it afterwards.

Jace's mouth was so new to her, it was almost as if she hadn't been kissing a normal mouth at all. She thought of calling it something corny like an _angel's mouth, _but the sentiment was too lame. Besides, he wasn't quite like an angel. He wasn't a cherub painted on a cathedral ceiling, he was more like a painting under a light, of the warrior angels she once read about. Archangel Michael, with a drawn sword.

When she thought about him at length, she got the impression that Jace was as hard and as beautiful as bone china. She got the feeling that he could crack like bone china, too. She would have to be gentle.

A sharpness strangely pulled her out of her reverie, drawing her eyes down to the arm that the nurse was prodding. An IV tube was connected to the end of the butterfly needle, and the long plastic tube ran to a machine that doled out her radiation. Clary let out the breath she didn't know she was holding. She was inside the same hospital room she had been in before, but now fully alert of what was going on around her. The needle stung going in, but it was such a familiar pain, and compared to bone marrow samples, it was nothing at all.

"There we go…" the nurse was saying as she pressed a piece of tape over the needle. This nurse was new, someone Clary hadn't seen here before. But of course, it had been more than a year since she'd been in this area of the hospital. She wondered where the nurses who used to attend to her went to. She never liked any of them. Only the room had stayed mostly the same. The children's ward was stuck in time, concealing everything like a mausoleum of bad, sick memories. Though she did feel an odd sense of nostalgia to discover that they were still using the same old VHS tapes of movies like, _The Nightmare Before Christmas, _and _Dumbo. _Clary had opted for the TV to stay off, though.

She muttered thanks to the nurse as she left.

"Just press the pager if you need anything at all, okay?"

"I know." Did she think Clary was new to this?

She settled into her bed. She was in for a long day of waiting, and while Jocelyn had gone downstairs to get coffee and a magazine, Clary allowed herself to close her eyes and resume dreaming. For a week, she couldn't help but let herself wander to the memory of kissing him. Even the word rebounded in her head, _kiss, kiss, kiss._ It was wild for her to have that in her mind, because she was never the romantic. Simon always was, always trailing after someone, falling in love with girl's online profiles. She didn't know if it could be called trailing, but Jace had been occupying her thoughts for days.

Jace had breathed away from her when she opened her eyes, when the kiss had somehow ended. She was momentarily panicked, thinking that he was upset at her forwardness, that she had made such a bold move when he hardly knew her. She imagined him like a suitor and herself like a lady in Victorian England, in the era of subtly, when intimacy was passed through light hand touches, and she'd just been far too improper. He was smiling at her though, and she felt her heart flutter when he reached up and brushed his finger over his own lips, like he was touching her imprint there.

And he hadn't said goodbye, he just stepped back lazily, almost smug, and wandered out into the night. Clary had been left in the Synagogue, bound to the floor like all the spray painted waves that Jace had drawn. Even now, in naturally lit hospital room, with the bed beside her empty, if she ran her tongue across her bottom lip she could almost still taste his mouth…

"They only had _Men's Health _and _Cosmopolitan_, so you're going to have to help me with this."

She opened her eyes to see her mother walking in, a book of crossword puzzles in her hand. Jocelyn had her hair up in a twisted bun, wearing very warn ripped jeans and her very cozy sweater. Her mother was very tactile, and full of touches. When she was uncomfortable, it seemed to Clary that Jocelyn wrapped herself in her clothes and burrowed. Most of the time, she dressed like this. Though, Clary could remember a time when Jocelyn's closet had been like a wonderland of dresses and colors. Somewhere along the line, a few of the nice clothes had become Clary's and the rest were lost forever somewhere. The green jacket that Clary loved was among those hand-me-downs.

"What's wrong with _Cosmo?_ Are the sex tips getting too recycled?" she said, wiggling her eyebrows. Luke was something like her mother's boyfriend, and they had been like that for years; at least something like a couple. But Luke never moved in, and they never got married. She loved to tease her mother about him, because as old as they were, she couldn't help but see them as this drawn out, adorable fling. It may have spawned from early childhood Clary, who caught her mother and Luke in lip lock often, and would always laugh mirthlessly. _Momma and Lu-uke, sittin' in a tree…_

"What do you know about _Cosmo Sex Tips, _huh?" said Jocelyn, swatting her with the book.

She smiled, and rolled her eyes, and fell back against the pillow. Jocelyn had a suspicious look on her face, which was understandable. Considering the place they were in, and considering the needle in her arm, Clary was in a spectacular mood.

Tomorrow, and the next day, she might feel like shit, she might not be able to feel fondly of anything, even Jace. She really doubted that, at the moment, but she also knew that feeling sick could make you desperate. The only desperation she currently felt was for Jace to text her, for her to be able to see him again. She didn't know what she would do, and that was the best part.

"Four letter word for _Fleet St. Barber,_" her mother said, tapping the pen against the page. Jocelyn must have known the answer because she loved musicals, but she also must have suspected that Clary was bored.

"That's easy- _Todd_."

There was another long stretch of silence, in which Clary listened to the sound of her mother's lungs inflate and deflate. She wondered what would happen if she told her mother about Jace, about kissing him. More than likely, Jocelyn would act irrationally as she often did. Clary felt an ache, like somewhere out there, there was a Jocelyn who she could tell all her secrets and thoughts to. There was also a Clary out there who kissed beautiful guys, and stayed out all night with them, but she had already sneaked into reality somehow.

"Nine letter word for _Father_," Jocelyn began. Clary got momentarily sidetracked by the word _father_, since it was not one that they often used. Clary knew very little of her father, just that he was a photograph on the mantle, and that he had died in a car accident a very long time ago. It was one of the endless mysteries of her life.

"_Patriarch._." She tried to say it without betraying any malice, but it came out sounding tight. Jocelyn didn't seem to notice, didn't look up from her book. It was impossible to get anything out of Jocelyn on the subject of her father. It was like expecting to knock down a brick wall with just your fists. It was another part of Clary that ached when she thought on it.

Clary stared down at her cell phone, which was officially supposed to be off, but she couldn't do it. It had been a whole week, and still, she had heard nothing from Jace. No texts luring her to mysterious clubs. She wondered what he was doing at that moment, while she sat here, in a whole other world. Maybe he was like a night owl, and only came out when the sun was down. A vampire, like in those stupid romances that Luke has stacked in the storeroom. The nerd girl in Clary could imagine being dragged off into the underworld with him. She'd probably let him do it.

"Welcome back, Fray," said a voice. She looked up and Simon was there, making his way to the foot of the bed.

"Simon, you're not scheduled this week, are you?" Jocelyn asked. She probably knew Simon's therapy schedule as well as she knew Clary's. She knew Simon's mother was always calling Jocelyn, to discuss her weekly struggles.

"No, but visiting hours are from 8-6," he said, throwing down Clary's Gameboy.

She scooted over so that he could squeeze onto the bed with her, where they could connect their Gameboys and play Pokemon together. She settled into the familiar weight of Simon beside her, and she nearly forgot about the slight ache where vein was being stabbed. She grew comfortable around the sound of her mother's nervous pen tapping and Simon's fingers rapidly clicking buttons. It was strange how easily, even on the first round, she fell into the chemo routine.

There was something comforting about it, but also something that made her feel like she was waiting. It was the restlessness she had been having, the feeling that she should be up and out and about. With Jace, with Simon. She should walk around the many hospital floors, and pull the dispenser behind her. She should run to Pandemonium club and wait for Jace to reveal himself again.

Her mother probably was as restless as she was, standing up abruptly, declaring that she needed more coffee. She offered to get something for the both of them, but of course, no one felt like eating anything. When her mother was gone again, she found it more quiet without the pen-tapping and consistent breathing. Simon's breath was raspy, probably from a combination of smoke and weakness.

"How's Mia?" she asked, needing something to occupy her thoughts.

Simon shrugged as he scanned aimlessly through his character's inventory. His glasses were askew, only just hiding the dark circles under his eyes. His eyebrows were non-existent, but she had grown quite used to the bareness of Simon's face a while ago. The skin of his face was clear, and ghostly pale, almost too smooth, but Chemo did that to you.

"We broke up," he said casually.

"Wait- what? When did this happen?" Clary felt like someone had just snapped her with a rubber band. How self involved had she been this past week to not notice this?

"Few days ago."

His answers were strangely clipped, but not angry. He was being weirdly reserved, and it was unusual for him to be anything but an open book to her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked.

Simon was quiet for a moment. Then he said,

"Sometimes, you need a few days. Before it's real."

This scared Clary to hear. She didn't realize that Simon had liked Mia that much. They had only been together a month or so, but maybe Clary hadn't been paying attention. Was he very upset? Could it be that she was missing her friend's heartbreak completely? It had taken Clary a few days to actually call Simon, and tell him that the "_the jig is up", _and she'd soon be joining him in chemo fever. They had taken that heartbreak together, though, the way they always did, with jokes and lightness, and odd bursts of pessimism and optimism. Clary got the feeling that Simon was dealing Mia all on his own.

Simon must have sensed her sudden alertness. He gave her a sideways glance, while also kicking her ass in combat with his well collected Pokemon.

"And besides, I didn't want to darken the mood any more." He gestured to the dispenser and the IV. "But you seem to be in a good mood these days, regardless."

When he asked about the uncharacteristic tag-along she'd brought last week, she said Jace was just a friend. Now, Simon's stare was as penetrating as her mother's, as if he knew that she had kissed him. Clary had told no one about that.

"Are you going to tell me why you broke up?" she asked. She wanted to sound more sensitive than the way she came off, which was demanding. Simon rolled his eyes and stabbed at the buttons a little more violently.

"She said she wasn't over her ex-boyfriend. Which is probably just a cop-out excuse." He sounded bitter. Clary put her hand on his arm, trying to think of something to say.

"That candy striper outfit was stupid," she decided to go with. It was true. Now that Mia was out of the picture, she allowed herself to think of all the things that had annoyed her about the girl.

"You're right."

They fell back into a silence, playing their game with absent minds. They were surely both thinking of other things. There was probably a lot more behind this Mia story, but they would talk about it somewhere other than here, in the warm glow of her bedroom. Probably on the phone, where he could hide his vulnerability from her.

"I think you're lying your ass off about that guy," he said suddenly.

"What?" She was a terrible actress. Her voice betrayed everything.

"Come on. This what's-his-face Jace guy. How did you even meet someone like him?"

_Someone like him?_ she thought. _I don't even know who that is, Simon. _

"I told you, he was in one of the bands at the show from last week." Why was she coming off so defensively?

"So suddenly, you pick up musicians at bars?" he asked. His voice wasn't cruel or accusing, just amused. It amused herself, to be honest. The fact that she had even made the social effort to go stand near Jace had been the highlight of her year.

"Who says I picked him up?"

"So he picked you up?" Simon raised his non-existent eyebrow.

"Simon," she said, blowing out a frustrated huff. "No one picked anyone up. We're just hanging out."

"He seemed kind of…full of himself," Simon said carefully. Clary laughed a little, under her breath.

"Yes, I think he is."

Simon paused again, then reached over and held down the adjuster for the bed. The mechanism tipped them slowly back. It was like being on a very tedious rollercoaster that could only go up and down. When they were younger, they used to pretend that they were space travellers, getting ready for the launch. They would hold down the button and do a melodramatic countdown, then blast off in their imaginations.

When they had moved to a 180 degree angle, and lay flat, side by side, Simon threw up his hands a bit.

"Your plot thickens, and mine thins to a nice, liquid texture."


	6. Six

At two in the morning, Clary awoke with a start, and with that awful feeling that your stomach is curling in on itself. She rolled her head deliriously over the edge of the bed, and vomited into the bucket that she only just managed to grab hold of in time.

She would never understand how the girls at her old school could treat vomiting so lightly. To her, the process of having your body purge its contents was far too drastic to be done on purpose. She shivered with the shock of it and tried to catch her breath. Sitting up in her bed, she felt like she weighed down and sluggish. She was a stone statue coming back to life.

The room was dark, the only light was faint and amber, and it came from the streetlamp outside her window. She stared past the fire escape to where the light was brightest, flared and blurry through the glass. The bucket was gross and warm in her arms, and it smelled. She was going to dispose of it, wash her mouth out, get on with the motions, but then the bedroom door swung open and filled the room with an unexpected light.

"Honey?" her mother's voice was thick with sleep, but Jocelyn had been sleeping lightly for three days straight, up at the first sign of Clary's discomfort.

"I'm fine." She wished her mother would sleep through it. As though ignoring this thought completely, Jocelyn became suddenly alert and came further into the room. She took the bucket from Clary.

"Do you want some tea? Do you want some water?"

"I'm going to brush my teeth again," Clary whispered hoarsely. She hated the acidic taste in her mouth. In the dim light, she saw Jocelyn's face give a slight pucker of concern. She would refrain from frowning because she knew that Clary hated to see her mother upset over her, especially when it was just a bit of puke. Clary sighed, her body sagging back against her headboard, then she put a great deal of effort into getting into a standing position.

"Let me clean this out for you," Jocelyn said, holding the bucket adjacent to her. As they followed the light to the bathroom, Clary wondered if her mother longed to sooth her, to rub her back or hold her hair. She wouldn't allow this, of course, she would protest her mother's fussing every time she reached to wet her forehead with a cloth or feed her medicine. Clary would take care of herself for as long as she could, until she got too sick to do so. They weren't counting on that to happen. Assumedly, they were waiting for a marrow donor that would fix everything for a while. She hoped they wouldn't get to the point where she couldn't go to the bathroom by herself.

In the washroom, Jocelyn went about cleaning the bucket out with soap in the bathtub, and Clary reached for her toothbrush with shaky fingers. Clary hated the nausea. She had always been good at long car rides and boat trips, fighting off any kind of motion sickness with her iron stomach. It was another one of the perks of her "steadfast dwarf genes" that Simon joked about. However, as the radiation took hold of her whole body, trying to root out the cancer, it seemed to also throw it onto a rollercoaster of ups and downs. She vomited quite a lot, and as much as Simon would love it if she was part of some fantasy dwarf race form _Warcraft, _she was only human.

As she brushed her teeth, she battled more and more stomach lurches. _Taking the punches_, she thought.

"I'm going to make some tea anyway," her mother said. Clary gave a non-committal shrug of her shoulders. When she finished with her teeth, she set the toothbrush back in its spot and looked up. The lights in the bathroom were like the lights of the hospital, too fluorescent and bright. In the mirror, she saw her disheveled hair, he pale skin looking clammy. She fumbled with the wall, not turning her head, and switched the lights off so that the room was all dark. She could see a small bit of unknown light reflecting in the mirror, but she not herself anymore, which she found to be a strange relief.

For a few moments, she leaned over on the sink and breathed through her nose. The mantra was, _in through the nose, out through the mouth, _but she could only stand to breathe through her nose the whole time because her mouth was a direct line to her stomach, and her stomach was going crazy. After a few moments, she felt that the nausea was passing, for maybe just another grace period. She might be able to get back to sleep soon.

Then from the kitchen, she heard the kettle scream. She thought her mother would switch the stove off and come padding back to the bathroom with the peppermint and ginger tea (which Clary would let grow cold and untouched), but the kettle continued its wailing for another thirty seconds. She pushed off from the sink and moved slowly, like a locomotive starting up on the tracks, until she was in the kitchen. The lights were off in there as well, but Clary could see the angry steam coming form the kettle's spout. She switched it off herself and moved it to the back burner. Jocelyn hadn't set out the tea yet.

Clary realized that there was a shadow on the sofa, moving with consistent breaths. Her mother had fallen asleep, slumped over against the cushion. How tired was she? It had only been three days since the chemo appointment, three days filled with early side-effects, but Jocelyn _had _been up with Clary for every spell of sickness. Was she even sleeping at all? The thought of her mother up all night, twisting her hands with worry, like Simon's mother, made her suddenly nervous.

She went over to her mom's sleeping form, reaching for the afghan that was on the chair beside the sofa and throwing it over Jocelyn. At least she was sleeping now.

Tip-towing, Clary made it back to her room, feeling heavy and tired, but not as if she would throw up again, which was a blessing. She crawled onto the bed and immediately curled herself into a comfortable ball that was still, somehow, uncomfortable. She was going to have to get used to tiredness again, to sleeping. Her subconscious would probably take over soon, and it would feel like she was dreaming more than she was living. Of course, there would also be the slumbers, the dreamless naps that pulled her under so deep, she imagined it was like going into a cryogenic chamber for a few years.

The deep thoughts of sleep were beginning to lull her into a real sleep. She could feel that it was only moments away, that moment when sleepiness becomes nothingness, and you're unconscious. That moment never came, however. It was disturbed by a sharp knock on what could only be her window.

She knew it was him even before she opened her eyes. Who else would it be?

With not even a hint of trepidation, she moved her body out of the warm bed to where the unseasonable draft was coming from. Jace was folded up on the space that was her fire escape, his chin on his knee. He looked cold. When he saw her, he smiled and leaned forward to press his palm on the glass, waving.

A series of questions went through her mind as she fumbled with the window, struggling to pull the old thing up. A blast of cool air made her shiver.

"A tapping on your chamber door?" he said. Clary looked at him disbelievingly. She poked her head outside into the cold October air.

"How did you know I lived here?" was the first thing she thought of.

He shrugged, and came forward to rest knees on the cool see-through metal of the fire escape. Her arms ached, holding up the window frame.

"You put your name on the mailing list at the bar," Jace said. She had, a while ago, just so that she could get flyers and emails about upcoming shows. The crummy bar, _The Steele, _as it was called was one of the few places that Clary ever went because it was free and it was nearby.

"Do you go there a lot or something?" she asked him. It was strange that she hadn't seen him before, but really, her and Simon hadn't been to a real show in ages, they had been spending much more time in his room with Mia and endless videogames. The other week was the first time Clary had gone out in a while.

"Yes. It was on Magnus's computer." He grinned. She didn't have a clue who Magnus was or what he had to do with her mailing list information, but she felt a little unnerved that he had gone through the effort of finding out where she lived.

"Isn't that a little invasive?" she asked with her eyebrows raised.

"Well, I wanted to see you. I thought it was rather ingenious."

Clary hid her smile behind her forearm. She didn't know how to flirt, or say anything that wasn't ridiculous. She said,

"This could have been my mother's room."

"What's your mother like?" he asked with the corner of his mouth curved up. She wanted to swat his arm, but then he leaned right in and kissed her lips that were slightly open and surprised, about to say something. She caught herself, and turned her head slightly so that her nose was pressed against the bridge of his, and his lips went around her bottom lip, and his top lip was caught in hers. With a breath, he buried whatever sickness and exhaustion she felt six feet under himself.

He pulled away from her and braced the window for her. She ungracefully let her arms fall back to the ledge. She was afloat in the air and not aware of anything but the slight strain of his arm muscles.

"Can I crash here tonight?" he asked, and it surprised her, sent a self-aware shock through her whole body. Did he want to crash? Here? In her bed?

"Come in," she said, without really thinking.

She took a couple of unsteady steps back so that he could climb in. With smoothness, he fit his legs through and leaped into the room without even a resounding thump. And he was there, in her room. As soon as his feet touched down on the carpet, Clary realized that there was evidence of her sickness around the room. Her pillbox was on her bedside table, a few prescription bottles sat around a few glasses of half-drunk water.

But his eyes were on the art of her walls. Posters and drawings, prints of Rembrandt's saddest portraits, and Van Gogh's flowers were everywhere. The wall above her bed was a mismatched museum. In between the art, Clary had taped Kodak pictures of her mom and Luke, and her old friends from school that she only sometimes talked to. With alarm, she remembered the picture of her and Simon that was stuck to the mirror in her room. They were twelve, and lying on the hospital beds with their freshly shaved heads, giving the middle finger to the nurse who had agreed to take their picture. With some semblance of stealth, she moved herself in front of the mirror and ripped the photo from the glass.

"This is it," she said in a low voice. "Where the magic happens."

"Magic? You wouldn't throw that word around so lightly if you knew Magnus. He once made a rabbit disappear." Jace said this, all while navigating around Clary's dark room, taking in the sight of her walls and her furniture. No one but Simon had ever been this deep into her house before. This place was where she lived. Her room was the most inner sanctum, the womb-like place she retreated to after long days of bullshit and long days of chemo. The exhaustion was starting to seep in again.

"Who is this Magnus?" she asked, moving around the other side of the desk and tucking the photo of her into a book on her desk. When she walked, she was Jacob Marley, dragging tons of chains and weights in her wake.

"He owns _The Steele_. He's not very good at managing it."

She remembered the pub and how it had always seemed like a horde of elephants had stomped through it, and how the bar had always been sticky, the tables wobbly, the graffiti in abundance. She had been drawn to it, of course.

Jace came forward and put his hands on her hips. He was much taller than her, and Clary didn't know why that suddenly mattered. Perhaps she'd been feeling small lately. His fingers brushed away a strand of hair from her forehead, and her heart began to thump like the beats in the music Simon listened to. Her chest was bursting with a migration of birds, fast and fluttering their wings, springing free from her ribcage. Her head also ached, and her tongue was flat against the roof of her mouth, warding of the acrid nausea that was rising up at the wrong moment.

"You look tired," he said. Was it concern in his voice? She didn't know if his concern bothered her or elated her.

"I'm sick," she said, again without thinking. She would tell him no more. He would assume it was a stomach bug or something benign like that, and tomorrow she would get the healthy marrow from Dr. Franz, and finish radiation before she lost a single hair on her head. She'd get so much better and run wild in the streets with him, and paint the town like she planned. The word "cancer" would never escape her lips. Maybe she should cross her fingers for luck, or start looking for pennies on the street. She could start praying. The hand of God would come down and press Jace and Clary together so that death couldn't thwart them. She put her hands on his hips like a gambler strolling into a casino with a pocket of cash. _Be lucky, _she willed herself.

"I have a terrific immune system," he said, breathing the words against her cheek. Then they kissed. She sagged her tiredness into his mouth, and her fingers were airy against the thin fabric of cloth on his waist. He wore such old, such thin shirts. She wondered if, like her clothes, they were memorials of someone.

It was stupid of her to be focusing on so many different things when it was Jace who was this close to her, kissing her. He wound his hand into her hair, starting at her neck and pulling his fingers through the thickness. Her scalp tingled from his movements, her lips parted to let him kiss her deeper, if that's what you were supposed to do. Clary had no clue how to kiss, but he seemed to know what he was doing. For a moment, she let her mouth go slightly slack and let him kiss his tongue partway into her mouth. Then she closed her lips around his, sealing their mouths and their tongues together. They didn't move for a moment, the kiss was just frozen. If her hear palpated one more time, she would surely go into cardiac arrest.

He took a deep breath against her mouth, pulling away from her again, then moving back in for one more lighter kiss that left her lips numb

"I think you need to sleep," he said. She looked up and nodded, weary. Then, at the mention of sleep, she realized the bags under his eyes were darker, more hollow. He needed sleep, too. She hadn't bothered to wonder why he had shown up here at two in the morning, looking for a place to crash. He took her hand and led her over to her own bed.

She knew it was only for sleeping, but her heart rate still sped up, and it felt wild and animated to have someone guide her there, as if they could do whatever else people did in beds. With that thought, she realized something.

"My mom," she whispered. Her mother, who was asleep on the damn couch, and would probably be up any minute to come check on her, lean over her to make sure she was still breathing. "I can't… I mean, she would flip if she saw you…"

Jace sat her down on the bed, then dropped to his knees in front of her. He gave her a concentrated smile, then suddenly he was flat on the ground, sticking his head under the bed. There was nothing down there but an old box of keepsakes that was locked, but she knew he wouldn't go tearing through it. She tapped his shoulder with her toe.

"What are you doing?" she whispered. He emerged from under the bed and grinned.

"I can hide down here. What your mother doesn't know won't hurt her." He grabbed one of her pillows.

"You're going to sleep _under _my bed?" she said, amused.

"I've slept in worse places."

And with that, he slid his body and the pillow under her bed, until he had completely disappeared from sight. She swallowed down the excitement that was tumbling through her. This was ridiculous, and she loved it. Would she ever get used to it? Or him? Would she ever get used to him and the way he made her feel?

She tentatively slid under her own covers, settling into the mattress. Then, she kicked off one of the blankets so that it slid to the floor. She watched it being dragged under the bed with a smile. Clary wondered what it was like under there, under _her. _His breath came out lightly, and hers came out strong and winded, but she could still hear him, his lungs filling up with the air of her room. She couldn't get over it, that he was _in her room. _

"Jace?" she whispered into the darkness. It was strange that she couldn't see him, but that she knew he was absolutely there.

"Clary?"

She let a few beats pass until she realized what she really wanted to know.

"Are you running away from home or something?" It sounded more stupid than she'd meant it to be.

There was a long pause.

"I like to get away sometimes."

"Why here?" She said it so softly, she wondered if she would have to repeat herself.

"I like you."

It was as simple as that. She ached to say something back like, _I like you to! It's disgusting how much I like you, Jace. I don't even know you and I like you more than I like myself. _But she didn't say that, she said,

"Do you live in a foster home?"

Another pause. Oh shit. She worried that she had put her foot in her mouth, and she was about to start back peddling, but then the smallest of words came out of the silence.

"Yes."

Relief flooded over Clary. She turned on her side in the bed, suddenly aware of the creaking that the springs made and hating them. She wanted to bite her tongue, to shut up, and keep that air of mystery between them, but there was no stopping her mind.

"Is it awful?" she asked, and the horror stories of street kids and they failure of The System started to flash through her mind. She pictured a broken home filled with broken kids, and foster parents strung out and at their wits-end.

"No, it's not awful," he said. She listened to his voice, detecting the slight strain to it. He was not being very forthcoming.

"Okay." Clary decided she would drop it for tonight. She didn't want to force him into an info dump. Still, her body relaxed, now that she had more of an idea of who the person under her bed was. She bit the inside of her cheek as a voice in her head shouted,

_Tell him it isn't the stomach flu. Tell him that you could die. _

Then there was the sound of breathing. Jace's breath was deeper than before, it was slower, like he was on the verge of sleep, like she had been before he tapped on her window. There was also the sound of wind, rattling the window gently. Somewhere in the apartment, a clock ticked. In the apartment above them, someone got up and walked across the floor, making little thumping noises. She listened to it, and then she heard him fill the room up with one more word that swelled and popped into a silence.

"Goodnight."

_A/N- I really love all your reviews- you guys make my day!_


	7. Seven

_She was lying in a pool of blood, sticky and hot, and red. It dripped down her arm when she tried to raise it. It seeped out of every pore. The Empire State Building loomed above her, and from this angle, it looked like the point of it would come down and pierce her. If she moved, she splashed the blood and it grew into the pavement, staining everything red. There was danger everywhere, people everywhere. She couldn't bear to move. They walked past her with briefcases, some saying,_

"_She's dead."_

_She wanted to shout, _No!, _but the words didn't come, only the blood . The sky was switching off and on, from night to day, clouds to sun, rain to snow. The clouds were filthy, filled with movement of angry grey angels. They wanted her, they wanted to get her, but the sky was too far away. _

_She would bleed until she died, and in death, she would bleed more. From the point on the Empire State Building, something fluttered like the wings of a far away pigeon. She watched the white grow whiter as it neared. White wings, white face, with a frozen expression like a white statue, the angel came close. It flew above her, and there was white and red, white and red everywhere. _

"_Why?" Clary sobbed to the angel. Her tears were blood. Her words were blood. _

"_Bloodletting cannot save you," the angel said in a voice. _

"_Why?" she sobbed again. _

"_You must bleed gold for me," the angel told her. _

In the morning, the door opened to Clary's room and woke her with a start. She had been dreaming about something, but from the moment her eyes opened, whatever world she'd been in had disappeared. She was left with the feeling that she had to resolve a conflict.

"Clary?" Her mother's voice was soft, meant to be a gentle awakening. Clary felt shaken.

"Hm," she mumbled into her pillow. She didn't look up, but she could feel the sun coming in through the window, and she could feel her mother's presence at the door, looming in on her.

"I'm going to go with Luke to get some things. You should come, honey." She knew her mother meant that she should come with her so that she could hover over her, make sure that she wouldn't suddenly drop dead of nausea.

"I'll stay here," she said, cloaking the bitterness with tiredness. She still didn't pull her head out of the pillow, but she heard a long pause in which Jocelyn was probably trying to decide if Clary would wither away without her. Jocelyn knew Clary's longing for independence, but sometimes she wouldn't give her daughter a break. _It's not responsible for me to leave you here when you're sick, honey. _She thought Jocelyn would play that card again, but amazingly she didn't.

"Keep your phone with you," she said. "Call me the second you need-"

"I know, Mom."

"And make sure you take your-" she was about to say something along the lines of _medicine, _and Clary quickly remembered two things, the realization of them hitting her like a freight train; Jocelyn was going to start talking about chemo, and Jace was still under her bed.

"I _know_, okay?" she snapped. A flutter of fear went through her. What if his foot was sticking out? Did he snore?

"_Alright, _Clary."

Her mother didn't sound hurt, just like she was resigning to Clary's little wrath and backing away with her hands up. Clary felt sorry all the same. She was often irritable, but this wasn't the way she wanted to wake up. For a moment she wondered if Jace wasn't there at all, if maybe he'd left before dawn. The idea made her stomach ache with disappointment. Her mother paused in the room for another long moment until Clary looked up at her, finally. Whatever sleep she'd gotten on the sofa had not replenished her. She sill looked a little frazzled. Clary wondered how terrible she looked herself at the moment, or had looked last night. She remembered the unpleasant pale face she saw in the bathroom mirror and fidgeted uncomfortably.

"I'm fine," she told her mother.

Jocelyn gave her a simple, "I know," before backing out of Clary's room and closing the door.

Her heart thundered in her ears as she listened for the sound of the front door closing, her mother's footsteps falling away. After thirty seconds of stillness, Clary relaxed back onto the bed. She was still tired, permanently so, but her nerves felt alive and electric. Oh, what Jocelyn would say if she knew she had a boy in her room. A boy who wasn't Simon.

If she listened, she could hear soft sound of him breathing. It was morning, bright inside her bedroom, and he was _still here. _Biting her lip, she closed her eyes and kissed him all over again. She pressed a hand to the mattress and sent him that kiss through the springs and the stuffing. Of course it wasn't quite enough.

With as much finesse as she could muster, she stepped out of the bed and stood on the carpet. He limbs ached and protested as she got down on her knees, and then her stomach. His face was turned toward her, his angular cheek sunk into the pillow. His chest rose and fell, and under here, his breath came out heavier. It was dark and wooden under her bed, but enough light lit up the gold in his hair. She wanted him to open his eyes so she could see what they looked like in the sun. He was a Christmas present under the tree. Under her bed.

Slowly she turned over and slid herself under until she looked up and saw the underbelly of the bed frame. Her shoulder brushed against his. Her eyes scanned him over and over, drinking in his sight. This felt like a once-in-a-lifetime chance to study his face like this, when he wasn't watching. He had no cocky grin, stripped bare by sleep. His hand was flat against his stomach, the blanket gathered at his hips..

She turned on her side so that she could edge her head onto a bit of the pillow. There was blond hair over one eye, Clary desperately wanted to bush it away from his face, but then his eye opened. She held her breath while his eyes saw her.

"Where am I?" was the first thing he asked. He blinked a few times and looked around.

"Under my bed."

"Right," he said, bringing his hand up to run over his face. His voice was deep, hoarse with sleepiness. "I had a dream that I was locked inside a museum."

Clary itched at the block in her mind. If only she could recall her own dream. It felt dead and gone, but she knew it was important, somehow.

"I'm sorry I woke you." She bit her lip, because it was a lie, and she was not sorry at all.

Jace's eyes went over her. She didn't look her best, she was still sick and felt like she'd been wrung out like a rag. Her hair was probably a mess. Her eyes were probably red and cloaked in darkness. She knew for a fact that her skin was alabaster-white. Still, Jace was fixated on her face for long moment. She was fixated on him. Then he said,

"Come here," and those words, she decided, were the sexiest two words in the English language. They undid her, cut her loose, and she set herself against him until his forehead rested against hers. She was back in the synagogue with him, back in the night with the fresh memory of his lips. She pressed her mouth to his, hoping that she was getting better at kissing. It didn't really matter, she supposed, because Jace had a spell on him that made everything float away. She didn't care that she was awful at this, new at this, she just cared that he kept hissing her. He did. His lips went suddenly feverish, pushing against her with such force that her neck kept tipping back. It was like trying to keep your head up on a rollercoaster.

He did something unexpected. In a fluid movement, his hand went to her lower back, and like she was weightless, he pulled her against him. She gasped and he chuckled. The laugh vibrated against her lips.

He felt as soothing as warm water, warm water spilling all around her. His hand started with small circles on her back, slowly causing her shirt to ride up, but she wasn't paying much attention. She spread her fingers against his side, then gathered the fabric of his shirt, fisting it in her hand. She felt greedy like a child, wanting him and wanting to declare him, _mine, mine mine! _She'd never share.

She needed air, her breath was gone, and she broke away from him. Panting, they were looking at each other again. His golden eyes, filled with light, became filled with something else. His pupil dilated, she noticed, like it was coming into a focus on her. She sighed against him, lips brushing again, puckering with his at the last minute. He reached around her and braced himself. With a quick, cat-like movement, he was hovering above her. She thanked God that there was enough space for the both of them under this bed.

His hair hung all around them, sunlit and golden. She lifted her hand, forgetting that it was shaking slightly, and pushed the hair back against his head. Nuzzling into her hand, he kissed her and lowered himself on top of her at the same time. She felt his weight balanced against her torso, her legs, and he occupied every place in between. Her arms went around to feel his back. _His back…_ She hadn't noticed this part of him yet, but it was beautiful and endless. He had smooth muscles, smooth in the concave that his shoulder blades made. She hugged him to her, and his tongue slipped easily into her mouth, like a response.

Clary decided that she officially loved his back. She felt the hem of his shirt and gained access to his skin without his permission. Her palms slid over the skin above his pants. He had baby-soft skin, and her hands felt coarse against it. Obsessively, she forgot about this kissing, and became preoccupied with the way his back arched against her hands when he dipped in to kiss her once, twice, three times until his lips landed on her neck. She trailed one lazy finger down the line of his back and he shuddered unexpectedly.

She couldn't help feeling it, because he was on her and all over her; she felt it pressing against her hip.

An alarming voice in her head yelled, like from some far away room, _Clary! You've known him for five minutes!_

But then his hand went to her thigh, sliding her leg up so that it was bent. He ran his hand back and forth over the fabric of her pajama bottoms. If this kept happening, she would probably bend her other leg, and that would make him pressed in between both of them. This realization was brand new, knocking her on her ass with sudden, fluttering fear. It was not butterflies in her stomach, it was panicked birds trying to get out and crashing against her ribcage.

"Wait," she breathed.

He waited, detaching himself from her neck.

"What is it?" he said clearly. How was his voice so steady? Clary swallowed as a lump rose in her throat. Last week, she had only ever kissed one boy, and now she was a girl with a boy between her legs. She fought off the mad urge to laugh, but instead, she did what she usually did and asked him a question.

"What's your last name?"

Jace laughed at this, pressed his face into the pillow, into her hair. She let her own arms fall to her sides, reluctantly away from his smooth back.

"That's kind of a big question," he said in her ear. A big question?

"You've had a lot of last names?" She was reminded of what he said last night in the dark, and the word _foster, _grew bigger in her mind.

Slowly, he slid off her, careful not to hit his head on the bed frame. She noticed that there were dust bunnies under here with them. Seeing them made her wish that she'd been brave enough to let him into her bed. She wasn't brave enough to do that, though. She put a stop to a good thing because she couldn't take not knowing him for another second. She wanted to know the little things about him, and the big things. It was selfish. It was unfair. She had told him nothing.

"It's just Jace," he said, echoing the fist time she'd asked him. His answer disappointed her, but she couldn't blame him for keeping it secret. His name, his foster parents, it must be complicated. There was so much she wasn't saying, either.

She turned her head to look out into the space of her room. She'd never seen it from this angle before, from this low to the ground. Her head ached now that Jace wasn't kissing her. Soon, she would probably have to throw up again. And in a ten days, she would have to go back and inject more radiation into her awful blood. The dread rose up around her room. It was growing into a shadow, trying to reach the glow under the bed and leech the light from them. She didn't turn her head back to him for a moment, but then she felt his hands slide over her stomach, easing her with his arms until her back was pressed against his front. His heat wrapped around her protectively as she kept one eye on the shadows that wanted to get her. This place with him was a sanctuary.

His fingers slipped through her hair, and he spoke against her neck, making her skin prickle.

"There's another show tonight," he murmured. "At _The Steele._"

"As president of your fan club," she began. "I suppose it's necessary that I'm there."

"You can sell our autographs and headshots."

She laughed at this, the image of her holding up an _I'm with the band _sign came to her mind. She didn't know how true the statement was. How "with" Jace was she? Surely, someone you made out with in your bedroom should know that there was Leukemia there, between the both of them. He should know what he was getting himself into, and she should tell him. She should tell him.

"I'll be there," she whispered instead. _For how long, Clary? How long _will _you be there?_

They were quiet. His head stayed resting against her neck, his long legs fitting inside her bent knees. If they stayed there long enough, she thought they might fall asleep again. She knew it would be nice to sleep in his arms. She might think about it on cold nights for the rest of her life. They did not sleep, however. They untangled themselves, and when his body heat was gone from her, she felt like there was a missing piece to her comfort. She was used to soothing herself, rubbing her own arms when she was cold, falling asleep with just her own legs in her bed. She was not used to being kissed, or being held. As she watched him slide out from the sanctuary, and become a pair of feet in her line of vision, she felt a weird displacement. Maybe she had just ruined herself, ruined her solitude. At that moment, she couldn't imagine wanting to be alone in a bed ever again, or under it.

She inched her way out to join him, finally standing in the normal light of her normal room. Jace standing by the window was like a bright splash of paint on the walls. A bright splash of gold.

She walked over to the window and helped him slide the stubborn frame up. The air was warmer than it had been last night, and Jace climbed through, into the breeze.

"You could have used the front door, you know."

Jace turned and faced her, squatting on the fire escape the same way he'd come in. It was several flights of stairs down onto the street, but she imagined that Jace could swing down them gracefully, like a street jumper or a gymnast. He gave her a long, smiling look. His lips were swollen, she realized, from kissing her. Her stomach stirred with excitement.

He leaned in again, and she was getting used to him filling up all her vision with his hair, his ears, his skin. He kissed her lightly, but didn't seem to want to pull away. She didn't make any effort to. She imagined kissing him forever in this spot, through the threshold of her fire escape window. He finally did let go of her lips, and flushed, he looked at her for a long time. Her arms wavered, lowering the window frame slightly from its weight. He scanned over her face, her lips, her chin, then back up to her eyes. Finally, he said,

"Jace Wayland."


	8. Eight

"Clary, no."

"What? Why not?"

Jocelyn's folded her arms across her chest. The movement was meant to make her look more assertive, but she just looked like she was protecting herself. Her face was scrunched up like she was smelling something foul. Clary could tell that she hated to say no to her, but Clary missed the Jocelyn who once would have given her everything she wanted.

"You can't run around at bars all night, Clary, what do you want me to do?" Jocelyn leaned against the table, the meager casserole full of organic, enriched ingredients sat untouched in front of her. Clary's was also untouched and lukewarm. "You're still sick, Clary."

"I won't be out all night. It's just for a few hours." She gritted her teeth, hating how immature it made her feel to negotiate with her mother. If it were a better world, she would be able to go out and have fun until her curfew was up like a normal girl on a normal Saturday night, but Jocelyn would happily tie her to the chair and force-feed her vitamins all night long if she could.

"What will you be doing for two hours? Spray painting buildings? I'm not letting you run around the city-"

"But-"

"Not buts."

Her mom picked up her fork and started to scoop up some of the casserole. She paused with the forkful in front of her, and Clary thought for a moment she was going to try to feed it to her. She just pointed at Clary's dinner and said,

"Try to eat, honey."

Eating was the last thing on her mind, not just because she could hardly stomach the smell of her mother's cooking at the moment, but also because she was itching to fly out the door. Jace would be waiting to see her in the crowd. He might wait for her after the show. It was getting dark out, and the October evenings grew shorter, and as they did, Clary's urge to be a night-owl flared up like a fire. She would easily sleep all day, sleep away her sickness in the harsh daylight, and then she would set herself onto the night, feeling strong (well, less sleepy). But daylight had it's advantages, she supposed, thinking of Jace's eyes in the sun this morning. Her lips tingled

Clary sighed, looking down at the green casserole. Her mother wouldn't let up if she didn't at least co-operate on this. Maybe if she wolfed it down, Jocelyn would reward her with a sabbatical from lying in bed all day. She took the elastic from around her wrist and hastily threw her hair up into a ponytail, readying herself for the food like it was work. When she went to take a bite of her dinner, her stomach gave a physical lurch, but she swallowed it down anyway. She was reaching for some water when she noticed the look on her mother's face.

"What is that?" Jocelyn asked, hushed.

Clary didn't know what she was talking about, but her mother's eyes went suddenly wide.

"What is what?"

"On your neck, Clary." She got up and moved around to inspect Clary's neck, dropping to her level, she turned Clary's head in her hands. "Oh honey, it's not a contusion is it? Did you notice it today? When did you notice it?"

Clary pulled away from her mom with the feeling that she had swallowed a brick. A contusion on the skin was not good for her. It was where the cancer had caused patches of her skin to become inflamed and red and angry, would only mean that she was getting sicker. She saw them once on Simon, the large purple stain on his hip. It really did make it look like the blood was poisoned. Fumbling, she reached for her knife to look upon her reflection in the silver.

There, on her neck, was in fact a bruise. Small, butterfly shaped, and nearing the collarbone, right in the place that Jace had been kissing her when he was on top of her…where he had been sucking. Her whole body sagged in relief as she realized what type of contusion this was. _Not cancer, _she thought, _just Jace. _

"I think we should go to the emergency room, Clary, I want to get that checked out. They will want to change the dosage if it's become-" Jocelyn had gone into her panic mode of organizing and planning her way into calmness. Clary surged with a mixture of fear and dread as her mother got up and took both their plates, nearly throwing them into the sink. She moved around the kitchen, tucking away the ingredients left out from dinner with her back turned. "Go get your coat and shoes. And make sure you grab your-"

"Mom, wait." How was she going to explain this? Her heart started to thunder, her fight or flight instincts on high. She wanted to get up and flee, but she stayed sitting at the dinner table.

"I'm just going to call Luke, honey, you go get your things, okay?" Oh no. She sounded shaky, and upset. Her mother was going to crash soon if she didn't come out with it.

"It's nothing to worry about," Clary said. She cleared her throat.

Jocelyn came back to the table with the phone in her hand, turning to Clary.

"Oh, sweetie, you're probably right. But we should still have the doctor's run a few-" she started, her eyes wide with concern. Clary shook her head, exasperated.

"No, Mom, it's not that. I… it's not the kind of bruise you think."

"What do you mean?" Jocelyn lowered herself back into the chair beside Clary, her fingers tapping the wooden table nervously. Clary touched the place where the hickey was, refusing to look at her mother in the eyes.

"I think it's a hickey." Blood rushed to her cheeks.

"A hickey?" her mother asked incredulously .

Clary couldn't help but cover her face with her hands. Her voice came out muffled as she said,

"It's just a hickey."

There was a long moment of silence, and it was filled with all of Clary's mortification. Was her mother going to ask how? She'd been shut in her room for the past 72 hours, so how was it that a hickey miraculously appeared on her neck?

"Who's giving you hickeys?" she asked instead. Her mother's voice surprised her- it wasn't mad. It wasn't even judging. It was just a little amazed, a little amused. Clary pried her face away from her hands to look upon her mother's. Jocelyn was hiding a smile behind her hard, unwavering eyes.

"Jace," Clary started. It occurred to her that Jocelyn might think she was making this up.

"Not Simon?"

"No," Clary answered immediately. No one knew about the disaster dating period between her and him, and she didn't plan sharing it with her mother any time soon.

"Well…" Jocelyn trailed off, looking away, over at the pictures on the wall in the living room.

Clary looked at her mother for a long time, trying to think of the right thing to say. Trying to picture herself smiling and gushing over Jace, having good, old fashioned girl talk. She could tell her mother what his eyes were like, and how she wanted to paint them every time he looked at her. She could tell her that when he did look at her, he was filling in all her colors, and when he wasn't there, she felt grey. She could tell her that he might be curing her cancer, or at least replacing it with himself in her veins and her marrow. But she didn't tell her mother any of this. She just asked in a small voice,

"Can I please go, Mom?"

Jocelyn gave her that look again, the concern coming off her in little waves. It was the same look she got when Clary was in the hospital, being poked and questioned on her discomfort levels and having her head shaved.

"Okay," she said.

It was a short bus ride to get back to the clubbing district where the bar was. Normally, she would have walked, but she didn't want to wear herself out. The disgusting feeling of her body reacting to the chemo still lurked behind her eyes, inside her stomach. She promised herself that she wouldn't let it ruin tonight. She wouldn't let it ruin anything.

Fifteen minutes later, Clary found herself holding her breath past the smokers outside, and reaching for the cold door handle of _The Steele. _She could hear the music immediately, the repetitive sound of the guitar riff was _Rebel Rebel_. Her mother's David Bowie albums were always on in the background of her childhood. She felt a prickle of nostalgia as she slipped into the bar, which was crowded almost all the way to the door. The space had seemed bigger the last time she was here, but there were more people here now. She sucked in the stale air and noticed him right away.

He was onstage, drilling into the song with his legs bent low, guitar hanging lazily at his side. The singer with the mutton chops sang, _"Rebel Rebel, you've torn your dress," _shouting the words to the crowd. Everybody jumped, one big thumping entity, slaves to the rhythm. Clary felt the fluttering birds in her chest turn to bees, and begin buzzing around. She jumped once, not liking the way her whole body seemed to disagree with the movement. Her stomach gave another uncomfortable lurch. Okay, she would save dancing for him, but for now, she would get closer.

The crowd was like storm. It was hard to approach it without being blown away or sucked into the middle of it like an undertow. She pressed herself against the people, feeling sweaty bodies slide against her skin. In the thick of the crowd, the air was heavy with pot smoke and heat. Eventually, she made it to the far right. Only a few girls stood in front of her, and she was flanked by jumping boys who looked very drunk. She swayed a bit when the crowd did, and though panting, she was alright in this spot.

Jace was above her. Right above her like he was the first time. She reached onto her tip toes, seeing him, but not knowing if he saw her. The girl playing bass slid beside Jace, pressed her back into his, and moved her fingers slowly up and down her instrument Clary didn't realize that she was so beautiful. The first time she saw them, Jace was the one she was staring at. Now she couldn't take her eyes off the girl, who was tall like a model, and had the face of one. Her hair was so long, down to her ass and black as night. She writhed against Jace's back, dancing along when the singer yelled, _"You've torn your dress, your face is a mess!" _

Clary's stomach lurched and it had nothing to do with nausea.

The girl pushed off of Jace then, moving on to the singer. Her dark hair swung away while she tossed her around. Clary was sort of gaping at her, her mind furious for no good reason. Maybe him and this girl were friends, or more than that. It was possible that this girl knew Jace, really _knew _him. She was going to let her eyes follow the girl around the stage more, but then something distracted her.

It was Jace's hair as he flipped it out of his eyes, and his eyes that landed directly on her. She looked up at him, her neck bare, and she realized he could probably see the hickey. He smiled wickedly and she smiled back.

"_Rebel Rebel,_" he mouthed.

She started to sing along with the song as it neared the end. She danced to this song with her mother in her pyjamas. The music went on and madly on while Jace moved back around the stage. Clary felt the energy at her fingertips, buzzing through her, but despite her best efforts, she felt the world start to spin, her head get heavy. _Whoa. _It was much to hot in here. _Don't pass out, _she admonished. It took her a moment to notice that the bar on her right was slightly separated from the crowd, darker and calling for her to come lean on it. She tried not to look back up at Jace as she squeezed away from the giant mass of people.

Leaning on the bar, she could still see him. She rested her elbows against the sticky surface and continued to watch the show, trying her best to look like she belonged here. The air was only slightly better over here, but she could feel herself relaxing again. Jace looked relaxed, he looked perfect, and right. His hands were the most beautiful when they were touching his guitar.

"Can I get you something, honey?" she heard a voice say from behind her. She turned her head, seeing the bartender who was not the same one that had been here last time. He was Asian, tall, with a head of spiky black hair. He was essentially tall, dark, and handsome, but she could see glitter on his skin reflecting in the light. He was young, however, Clary got the immediate sense that he was older than her.

"Um…just water." She didn't think ordering water helped her image much, but the guy filled a cup with ice and water and set it in front of her before she could say something cooler like, _vodka on the rocks. _

"Good girl," he said. "Stay hydrated."

She laughed and took a sip as the bartender leaned over the bar on his elbows, putting his chin in his hand. He looked bored, like he wanted to do something else, which must have been why he started talking to her. He pointed to her neck.

"Somebody really did a number on you."

Her fingers went to the mark again, nervously brushing over it. The skin was a little sensitive and she hadn't noticed that before.

"I guess so." Telltale blood rushed to her face. Being so pale was a disadvantage when you were like Clary, who was always embarrassed.

"I'll raise you," he said, tearing the sparkly black shirt he wore away from his collar. There were two dark purple hickeys there. She could only imagine how passionately someone might have to ravish her neck for those kinds of hickeys to appear. She imagined Jace doing that and felt a little tremor go through her.

"You win," she told the bartender.

"They're like an accessory, these days." Clary laughed at this. She was walking around with her hair up, leaving her neck bare for the world to see, wearing the hickey like it was a necklace. So maybe she wanted everyone to know that she wasn't so pathetic, that she had kissed someone and they'd kissed her back. The bartender asked her,

"Where's your boyfriend?"

She fidgeted with the glass of water. Up on stage, the song was changing into something else slower, but she could still hear Jace's guitar filling the bar with electricity.

"I don't really know if he's my-" she started, but the bartender interrupted her.

"He's got commitment issues, right?" He rolled his eyes. "They all have commitment issues, every one of them."

"No it's not that," Clary said. "He's just new."

Just then, someone else came out of the room behind the bar. There must have been an office back there, but Clary was too busy paying attention to the tall, slender boy that came from the door. He had dark hair, and blue eyes that registered her briefly, and seemed to dismiss her just as quickly. He moved over to the bartender.

"Magnus," the guy said. "You forgot to send the order in again."

The name Magnus lit up in her mind.

"You're Magnus?" she asked. He raised one of his dramatic eyebrows. There was dark kohl under his eyes and curiosity in them.

"The one and only," he said, batting his eyelashes. The tall boy seemed not to be paying much attention to Clary and Magnus's conversation. He raised his hand as if to run his fingers through the spikes of the bartender's hair, but Magnus swatted him away and gave him look. "I worked for three hours on this," he said, pointing to his head. The guy laughed and slid against Magnus so that he could put his arm around him instead.

"Jace says you can do magic," said Clary. At Jace's mention, both the boy's ears seemed to perk up like a dog's. The quiet one who wasn't Magnus looked more sceptically at her.

"_Do magic?_ Jace has been underselling me. Sweet girl, I can conjure your inner most desires out of thin air, I can summon the spirits from the underworld and compel them to do my bidding, and I can assure you that it will _always be your card._" With that, he drew a deck of playing cards from his sleeve and looked like he was about to hold them out to her, but the boy with the blue eyes spoke.

"So you're Jace's new plaything?" he said. His eyes could have been x-rays, the way they bore into her with some kind of look, almost unpleasant, and entirely judging. Clary squirmed uncomfortably at the word _plaything. _She recalled Jace's voice saying something like,

"_Rock bands don't have fan clubs, they have groupies." _

She'd only known him for a week, and this morning she gladly threw herself at him What did that make her, exactly? Clary realized, as she looked at the two boys who probably knew Jace well, that she had no idea what she was doing. She had no idea what Jace would want from her, or what she even wanted from him. For the first time, she got the feeling that this whole thing was doomed from the start. How often did he have these "playthings" hanging around? Suddenly horrified at the idea, she tried to keep her mind from wandering to the worst-case scenario. He might just be keeping her around to kiss and deface property until he got bored, and then he would cut her loose. She remembered another thing he'd said, one of the first things he said about being a musician.

_"Don't you know we're just in it to get laid?" _

She felt suddenly sick.

"Are you alright, darling?" Magnus asked, and then several things happened all at once. On stage, someone threw a beer bottle that nearly hit the lead singer in the face, but shattered against the drum set when he ducked out of the way. Jace, with another fluid, cat-like movement, slipped out of his guitar strap and leaped off the stage, onto the drunken guy who threw the bottle. Clary spun and vomited on the ground beside the bar stool just as the crowd pushed away to isolate the fight. Without the music, the whole club seemed to be shouting, screaming, bustling. Clary gripped at her stomach, turning her head to see Jace bring his fist down on the inebriated guy beneath him.

She heard Magnus call for her as she fled, half running toward the back exit.


	9. Nine

It stunk like iron and garbage and cat piss in the alley. Cat piss was always underlying the smells in these cramped, dark areas between buildings. She didn't think she would throw up again, but the stench was something else. She felt hollowed out, wobbly, and drunk despite her painful sobriety. If she was drunk, she'd have a wonderful excuse for throwing up on the floor. If she was drunk, she would be able to write off the last two minutes as drunken confusion. Suddenly, the bass of distant music began to thump out of _The Steele, _which must have meant that the fight was over, and things were going back to normal inside the club.

_Jesus, _she thought, _what was that? _The unsettling image of Jace's arms strained, one holding the guy below him, the other cocked back, ready to punch, came to her mind. Clary hated confrontation. Once, there had been a fight between two boys at her school, in the middle of class. It was brutish and ugly, and someone got a bloody nose. They 'd knocked the desks and chairs over in the loud, quick struggle, while the teacher pried them apart. Clary had been so shocked by the violence that she cried. And then another time, Sarah Alderman tied her hair to the monkey bars and she couldn't pull Sarah's hair back, she just got red-cheeked and embarrassed, and quiet when everyone laughed.

She wanted to cry now; there was a distinct prickling feeling at the back of her eyes. Pressing them into the heels of her hands, she leaned against the brick wall. Back here, all was quiet except the hissing sound of steam pouring out of the building's vents. It looked like a film-noir movie. She could feel the pulse of the bar, the drums hitting heavy. It didn't sound like Jace's band anymore.

It occurred to her that she should get the hell out of here. Her logical mind was shouting at her to leave, to forget Jace because he was obviously crazy, and he liked to fight, drink, get tattoos, and he wanted to have sex with her this morning under her bed. The heavy implication that Jace was used to _playing _around with girls still made her heart ache. That guy with the blue eyes had just looked at her like she was nothing, and God, she'd nearly thrown up on him at the thought.

_Maybe you are just nothing to him. _

She sobbed once because she was confused, and Jace beating down that guy was ricocheting inside her skull. She didn't know that Jace could or would fight like that. She cried a little more, upset for making a fool out of herself in front of Jace's friends. She sobbed again because she was sick and tired. Clary was in no state for this. Her mother was right.

She convinced herself to leave this place well enough, but her body wouldn't do it. She couldn't peel herself from the wall. Just then, the door banged open, starting her so much that she did tear herself from the wall in surprise.

"Clary?" she heard. She was still behind the door, hidden from him. She could start running in the opposite direction and she might have if he hadn't stepped out of the bar completely and let the door swing shut behind him. "Clary," he said as he noticed her.

"I-" she began, but she let the word hang in the air. She had absolutely no idea what to say to him. It was too dark to see his knuckles, but she guessed they were red and torn. There was a red bloodstain on his threadbare t-shirt.

"Magnus said you were sick," he said to fill silence. There was something in his voice. Clary pegged it as shame after a moment. She stared at him, unable to bring any words to the surface of her mind. She was underwater with all her thoughts like pressure against her ears, and trying to study his face, and trying to _figure him the fuck out. _It got unbearable, and finally Clary said,

"I'm going home."

She turned and was going to slip in between the dumpsters, but he grabbed her wrist before she could take a step.

"Look," he began. "I don't know what-"

"You don't know what happened? You looked like you knew what was happening." She couldn't help it- the confusion was turning into anger. She wondered where the drunk guy was. Being dragged home, bloody and knocked out, by his friends?

"I fucked up, alright? That guy was ruining it and-"

"I think the show would have gone on if the lead guitarist hadn't jumped off the stage," she said, pulling her wrist out his hand.

She took a few steps away, but of course he followed.

"Please, just don't-" he broke off. He was getting flustered and there wasn't even a glimmer of the cocky musician she knew (barely). "I shouldn't have done that, I really fucking shouldn't have done that. I don't even know why I did, Clary. I didn't even think-"

She spun around and her stomach started to turn. She might throw up again.

"I don't understand you!" she yelled at him. She had never yelled at anyone before, save her mother. Jace's eyes widened as her voice went up. "We hardly know each other. I don't know you at all."

"You could," he said, low. "If you stay."

This threw her off. She glared at him, wanting very much to be just like her mother, who would retort with something finite and glamorous, and she would toss her hair behind her shoulder, leaving him in the alley. She was not her mother, though,. She was just Clary, who was standing here, yelling at Jace for being such so enigmatic when she was hiding everything from him. He was so pleading at the moment and guilt had grown like a vine, wrapping itself around her insides, but it still did nothing to cure her. She still just wanted to know more. She wanted a clear picture of him, and right now, all her pictures of him were all muddled and blurry.

Her hand went to the hickey on her neck. Ten minutes ago, she'd been proud of it, and now she felt like it was a damning thing.

"The guy in there," she pointed to the door. "The tall one at the bar- he called me your _plaything._"

Jace took a long, steadying breath in through his nose before saying very slowly,

"Alec…likes to think that he knows what he's talking about."

"Who is he?" she asked immediately.

"My brother." His answer was just as immediate. They didn't look a thing alike, which was probably connected to the fact that he was a foster kid. She wanted to ask him about his family. Instead she asked,

"Is what he said true? Is that what I am? A new toy?"

"No-"

"Because now I'm thinking that you only came to my room last night for that." She remembered his hands on her hips, his eyes nearly topaz in the dark.

"Would you believe me if I said I've never spent the night with a girl before?" he asked. Her heart started to thunder. Surely he wasn't a virgin.

"You mean you've never _stayed _the whole night," she guessed. It seemed like he was the type to crawl into your bedroom at night, then leave before the sun comes up. What if she had woken up this morning and he wasn't there? _But he was there, _she thought.

"Never just sleeping. I wouldn't normally do that."

She kept quiet, her mind racing to think of questions to ask him. She took a tentative step forward, and so did Jace. With him much closer, she could see the Goosebumps raised on his arms. He really did need to start wearing a coat. She could smell sweat and sweetness on him, too. She hoped she didn't smell like vomit.

"So you screw around a lot," she said, phrasing it like a question. He swallowed hard, only missing a few beats.

"Yes." There was still shame in his voice and Clary didn't know how it made her feel.

"And you fight a lot."

"I…" he began. "I guess old habits die hard."

She put her hand on his arm, braving his eyes with hers.

"What does that mean?" she whispered. He closed his eyes when she asked this, like he knew she was going to. She thought he was probably remembering something. It took a moment, but he finally opened his eyes and looked at her again.

"I've lived in a lot of places and they weren't all nice." He said it with a surprising sturdiness.

"I figured that."

"The fucked-up foster kid story is kind of clichéd, don't you think?" he said, and she raised her eyebrows at the question. "You think I'm putting on an act to get in your pants."

She put her other hand on his other arm, so she was sort of holding him, but at arm's length.

"I don't think it's an act."

"How can you be so sure?"

She saw that he was testing her, trying to see how far he could push her trust. Putting ideas in her head that maybe he was pulling an act, that he was just great at manipulation and she was falling for his tricks because she was young, and stupid, and inexperienced. She could imagine sleeping with him tonight and then him being gone the next day. She moved in closer to him, tucking her fortunately short head under his chin, hugging him a little for warmth, a little for comfort.

"I know all about acts. I don't think you're a liar." She was a liar. She was a liar. She was a liar.

He hugged her back. He was cold.

"In any case," he said. "I'm sorry you saw that."

She relaxed a little with him. Her stomach muscles unclenched considerably.

"I don't like fighting," she said. She didn't tell him that she disliked it because she was a weakling. She couldn't pull Sarah Alderman's hair. She couldn't stay _not sick. _She was powerless with mostly everything. She didn't like fighting and she couldn't fight, and she couldn't walk away from Jace, she might not ever be able to. The grey and black cold alley was Technicolor with her red hair and his blonde hair.

"Well…" he began, and she felt his jaw rest against her head. "It can go and you can stay."

She swore that his arms went tighter around her. She said,

"Alright."

She didn't know what she was agreeing to. She'd stay tonight? She'd stay the next day, and the next?

The door behind them opened, the music following whoever out with them and filling the alley with sound. She turned out of Jace's arms and saw Magnus in the doorway.

"Isn't this sweet? You get to make out in the alley and I had to haul your victims out before they trashed the bar. They fucked up…my hair." He narrowed his eyes to slits and glared at Jace in half-seriousness.

"I'll do the dishes," said Jace.

At this, Magnus's face dropped back into an instantaneous warm smile. "Deal. Now come inside before you die of hypothermia. And honey, you might want a mint…or a seltzer…or something," he said, looking at Clary. Jace sniggered behind her and blood rushed up to her cheeks.

"I'm so sorry, Magnus, I-" she started, but he scoffed and waved his hand like he was brushing away a fly.

"Oh, please, you're not the first to toss their cookies on the bar and you certainly won't be the last."

Magnus turned with that comment and held the door for them. Clary and Jace followed him inside, where it was alarmingly more warm and loud as soon as they entered. The door to the alley closed, sealing them in. Some drunk people were bent over in the hallway, and they all had to sidestep them in order to get back to the bar. On stage, another band was playing something loud and fast. The whole room was jumping again, but Clary just tried to tune it out and keep her focus on maintaining her cool long enough to get through the night. She already threw up in front of them, so she figured she could only go up from here.

While Magnus stepped back behind the bar, Jace pulled up and sat on the barstool. Not the barstool she threw up on. Clary stayed leaning against the bar as Magnus got to mixing drinks, apathetic. She put her chin in her hand, turning her head to look at Jace. Jace smiled and copied her movement, pulling a mock-serious face, an adorable grimace, making fun of her nuance. She swatted his arm and he laughed, but it was too loud to hear the sound.

Clary gratefully found the few package mints that Magnus had conspicuously left on the bar and popped them into her mouth. Behind her, someone shouted,

"You owe me a shot, Wayland."

It was the supermodel from Jace's band, with long black hair. It swung behind her as she slid over to them. She tapped the bar to get Magnus's attention as Jace shouted back,

"I will not be an accomplice to your tequila binge. Remember what happened last time?"

"Come on, it was _one park ranger._"

"And I'm sure he still has the scars."

Clary didn't have the slightest clue what they were talking about, and Jace seemed to notice that she was lost. He leaned close, next to Clary's ear and told her that this girl was named Izzy. The girl just seemed to realize Clary was there, which wasn't that unbelievable. Clary still thought herself to be rather forgettable, especially next to this Izzy. She felt like she was staring at a Greek statue.

"You sounded great…up there." Complimenting seemed to be her default when it came to band members.

"We did, didn't we?" she said, dreamily. Then she gave Jace a pointed look. "While it lasted."

Izzy leaned over the bar while Jace rolled his eyes, but they came and rested on Clary and she could see the regret in them. Magnus came back over with a shot of a golden colored alcohol.

"You get one, Isabelle," he said, sticking the shot in front. She tossed it back sans lime wedge or salt. With a pinched face, she slammed the glass back down and looked to Magnus.

"I'm your boyfriend's only sister, Magnus, I thought that bought me perks?" She batted her eyelashes toward him. Clary thought she must be talking about Alec, the blue-eyed guy, and she realized that they looked very alike, with the same dark hair and superiority.

"She's your sister?" Clary asked Jace while Izzy prodded Magnus for another shot.

He nodded , leaned in close again. She loved the feeling of his breath tickling her neck when he spoke.

"I've lived with them for awhile. The longest." Did he mean the longest out of all his foster homes?

"I don't have any brothers or sisters," Clary said. It made her feel better to tell him something about herself, something completely true.

"They're a pain in the ass."

As if on cue, Alec emerged out of the room behind the bar again. He eyed Isabelle, Jace, and Clary with his cold stare. His eyes fell especially on Clary. He said,

"I think you might have had enough."

"I'm not- I'm not drinking," she said, a little defensively.

"Maybe she couldn't handle the smell of that cologne," Jace said, his voice thick with annoyance. She rubbed her brow, a little humiliated as Magnus spun around, waving the knife he used for cutting limes.

"Excuse me, I bought him that cologne for his birthday, and it's Armani, and it smells like _heaven_."

Alec's cheeks went red and he scoffed, turning his back to them so that he and Magnus could talk.

"I feel like," Izzy said in between hiccups. Somehow, she'd gotten Magnus to line three shots up for her. "I've missed something." Leaning forward, she looked over to Clary. "Who are you?"

"I'm Clary," she said. She was feeling kind of shy, kind of intimidated.

"She's responsible for most of the graffiti in the district," said Jace, with a note of pride in his voice that made Clary blush.

For the next little while, Clary listened to Isabelle and Jace bicker about whether they were going to do a Spice Girls cover at the next gig, which Isabelle was adamant about. This piqued Clary's interest, if only because she was the ultimate, and most dedicated Spice Girls fan as a child_. _Jace shook his head, and to her surprise, pulled Clary from around the torso so that she was sitting lightly against his lap. Her stomach fluttered when his arms crossed over her torso. It felt like he was holding everything in place.

"We will do a Spice Girls cover over my dead body."

"Then, roll over Jace, cause it's happening," Izzy replied.

"You know," Clary began. "A heavy cover of _Stop Right Now _might not be that bad."

Isabelle clapped her hands and pointed at Clary.

"Yes, that's exactly what I thought." She finished her third shot and blew Magnus a sloppy kiss. Magnus shot her the finger. Isabelle, Clary realized, was kind of like the pulse of the little group. She was always going. She came over to the other side of them, facing Clary and Jace.

"I like her," she sad, slurring. "Why didn't you introduce us sooner? I never get to meet your girlfriends."

At the word _girlfriend, _Clary felt her heart rate increase, but Jace's arms around her middle didn't move or twitch. She wondered how long you had to be kissing someone in order for them to be your girlfriend. She wished she could see his face right now, but she just tried to relax against him, feeling him breathe against her, trying to show him that the word didn't scare her.

"You're always too busy with your boyfriends, Izz," he said. Isabelle snorted and laughed, tossing her long hair back. An angry pang of longing went through Clary. She'd kill for that long hair.

"You're right, ha!" She threw her hands up in careless sort of gesture. "And speaking of boyfriends, where is Nicky?"

After that, Isabelle disappeared into the crowd to find Nicky and left them not drinking at the bar. She noticed that Magnus and Alec had already slinked off the hallway near the back exit, and Clary caught a brief glimpse of the kind of neck-ravishing that had caused those hickeys on Magnus's neck. She turned her head so that she was facing Jace. With her own neck bare, he noticed the hickey and touched it. His knuckles were sill red and angry from the hitting, so she closed her eyes.

She was surprised to feel his lips close around the spot on her neck. He moved them against her skin, down to her collar and back up to her jaw line. On her neck, he kissed and kissed, and bit gently, probably giving her another hickey. She didn't care. The lights were low, there was music, and she was sitting, wrapped up in Jace, in public.

He kissed her all the way to her ear, and tucked the hair behind it. She shivered, pressing her head against his, then sharply turning her neck to face him, so she could look at him, and let him kiss her again. He kissed her breathless, his grip around her middle tight like a corset.

He murmured something against her neck, something like,

"What are you doing to me?"

Clary felt her blood course, her nerves jump, her muscles tense. Nothing or no one had ever had this kind of effect on her. So she leaned her head back so that it was resting on his shoulder and she said,

"I could ask you the same thing."


	10. Ten

Clary shifted on the bed because the sunset had positioned itself so that the pinkish light was the brightest coming through Simon's window, hitting her in the face. Simon had no curtains, just open windows that let in as much light as possible. He had Seasonal Affective Disorder, he said. Fall was going to come to an end soon, so that a harsh New York winter could take over, all grey and dirty and ashen.

Simon hated the winter, and really, he hated anything that signified death. It was understandable.

Simon sat cross-legged against a bunch of pillows that his mother had insisted he lay upon in his bed. They were hospital issued, with hospital emblem stamped pillowcases, meant for his sore muscles. He was crushing weed in his fingers, making a neat little green hill on a textbook.

The textbook was for his Sociology unit, and Clary recognized it as a part of Hodge's curriculum. Simon went to school part time, and had a tutor, Clary's tutor, to help him keep up with the work. He was still officially enrolled in his high school, but he saw Hodge more than he went to his classes.

A few years ago, Clary a problem where getting to school was a major and rare occurrence because of constant appointments, constant sick days. At school, her friends were all so sentimental, and so careful around her, and then the rest of the school sneaked glances at her, because somehow they had all found out that she was sick. On top of that, Clary was never a very good student.

She didn't go to school anymore. She convinced her mother that it made sense for her to get a full time tutor instead of braving the hallways of her high school. They were referred to Hodge Starkweather by the hospital. He taught sick kids who were in and out of treatment too often to learn on their own. She liked her weekly meetings with Hodge. His office was basically a library and it smelled like Luke's store, like old books. She liked learning history from him because he was so passionate about it (he had his doctorate in History, but you would never catch him calling himself Doctor).

"Do you ever think about going back to school?" she said suddenly.

"I am in school," he said. "I showed up for gym last week."

"I bet you just stood around and yelled at the rope-climbers."

"I still went," he said, shrugging. Simon liked school for one reason; socializing. He used to have a pretty tight-knit group of stoners and nerds in his old classes.

"Do you still see you're old friends?" she asked. Simon had gone back to breaking up his stuff, and he shrugged again.

"I make guest appearances now and again."

Clary never saw any of her old friends. She wondered if they missed her. Did she even miss them that much? Honestly, she was so used to solitude and Simon that she couldn't tell the difference between _alone_ and _lonely_. Now that she was with Jace, she felt like she was starving for friends and fun. She straightened her legs, thinking about her old art class with Danielle and Erica. She'd laughed more than she painted, but it was always the most fun out of her day.

Simon pinched a bunch of weed and spread it out in the paper, using his finger to even it out before rolling it with one hand. He licked it close and stuck the unlit joint in his mouth, let it hang there while he packaged his weed and stored it back in the old snuff tin that Clary found at an antique market. When he lit it, he offered it to her. She shook her head.

"Come on, Fray, you're allowed to now."

She could never get past the feeling of burning lungs. But then again, she always willingly breathed in spray paint fumes without a care. On that notion and with a bit of apathy, she took the joint. She still only puffed on it, but it felt thick and rank in her throat. She involuntarily coughed out a plume of smoke and shook her head, steadying herself. Simon chuckled at her and took his weed back. He played with the joint, rolling it in between his knuckles. He was quiet for a while before saying,

"You know there's this dessert toad in the west, and it's got this wicked venom, right? And there are these cults of people who collect the venom and smoke it. It's a crazy hallucinogen and they just lie out in the middle of the dessert, tripping. They're out of their minds- like convulsing, and seeing all kinds of shit. They go into this trance and when they come out, they say that everything is, like, crystal clear. It shows them all the secrets of the universe." Simon said this while smoke escaped his lips in pretty wisps.

"That sounds kind of grotesque," said Clary.

"They think they're seeing God," Simon said with a look on his face, almost like longing. Clary shifted, uncomfortable with Simon's expression.

"I don't think I'd like losing my mind like that."

Simon drew his legs out and stretched them on the bed. He leaned back and let the pillows swallow him up a bit.

"You know what they say, Fray. You gotta let go and let God."

Clary raised her eyebrows at him, unsure for the first time, whether Simon was being sarcastic or not. She snatched the joint from his hand, her fingers passing over his cool skin. Did Simon long to escape so much that he would consider something like magical toad venom? She was suddenly too scared of the thought of losing him to hard drugs, she just said,

"I think you watch too much Discovery Channel."

"I know."

After a long moment, Simon pulled off his hat and scratched the top of his bald head. Clary was hit with a familiar pang of dread as she was reminded that in two days, she'd have to go in for her second round of chemo. The past two weeks had been someone else's life entirely. Someone else was in Clary's head, driving her to pull her tired limbs through her fire escape window. It was someone else on the subway at one in the morning, someone else playing with cans of spray paint. Someone else was being bent under Jace's thumb and finger. Someone else was letting him put his hands on her, on her ass, and on her chest. It wasn't her who shoved her tongue down his throat like all her sustenance came from his mouth.

The real her was the one who had appointments to keep. This other Clary belonged to the night. This other Clary would never have seen the inside of on Oncology floor.

"You look too good to be back on the juice. They got you on some kind of experimental drug or something?" Simon asked after a long while. He was looking at Clary with narrowed eyes. She pulled at her shirt collar. His eyes looked accusing and she hoped he didn't see the remnants of the hickeys on her neck.

"I don't know. I don't feel that sick, I guess." The minute she said it, a terrible voice in her head told her, _you will feel it, sooner or later. _

"It's that guy, isn't it? You're new boyfriend," he said, also accusingly.

"He's got a name, you know." Inside, she was turning the word _boyfriend _over and over in her hands.

"Where's he go to school?"

She didn't even think he went to school, by the way he stayed out all night with total disregard for the time or date. She could see Jace as a high school dropout. She would add that question to the list.

"I don't know," she admitted.

"Well…how old is he?"

"I don't know…" It was like personal things always went on the back burner when they were together. She wanted to ask him how exactly old he was, where exactly he went to school, but he never asked her any of these things either. Last week she'd been introduced to his world and his friends, which was one small step for man, one giant step for Jace Wayland and Clary Fray. How long had she known him now? Three weeks, give or take?

"Where's he live?"

"I don't know," she said, dropping her facial expression. Now she felt like she was being interrogated. She didn't know the answers to these questions, and Simon was making that point very obvious. Her stomach felt heavy with discomfort.

"What _do _you know about this guy?" Simon said.

"I know he's a hell of a good kisser," she said, almost spitting it at Simon. He took his eyes off her to look at a loose thread on his jeans. He didn't seem to like hearing the truth. Maybe it wasn't kosher to shove your new boyfriend into your old boyfriend's face.

"Alright, I get it," he said in a gentler voice.

"You sound like my mother." That wasn't exactly true. Jocelyn didn't say much about Clary's sudden night life, except when she was forbidding her to go out. This was strange because Clary thought she'd receive the Spanish Inquisition from her, or that she'd demand to meet Jace. Not a peep came from her mother, though, and Clary couldn't decide if this was a good or bad thing.

"I just think it's kind of weird," said Simon, looking down.

"It is kind of weird. But I like him."

"You more than like him."

She thought about this for a moment. It was a thought that passed in the night when she felt a little flutter in her chest that reminded her there was someone to think about. When thinking about him, Clary kept dancing around the word. The L-word. If she said it out loud, if she even thought it, she imagined it would be like flipping on a switch. She had no clue what the switch controlled. Despite of all this, she had to admit that Simon was right; she more than liked Jace.

Biting her lip, she got up from the bed. Her muscles still felt sore, and fatigue followed her like a curse, but her body felt mostly in her control. She stretched her arms out in front of her, looking through the smoky air at Simon's messy bedroom. She wondered what Jace's bedroom looked like.

"Does he know?" Simon's voice made her turn around.

"Huh?"

"Does he know you have cancer?" Simon said, and Clary felt like she'd been slapped in the face. That was the other word she'd been dancing around, less pretty and beginning with a C instead of an L. Cancer and Love. She felt her heart quicken.

She twisted her shirt in her hand. Her eyes stung a bit. _Shit, don't cry, _she thought. Simon must have known the answer to his question, but she told him anyway, with a thick voice,

"He doesn't know anything,"

Simon crossed his legs again. He rubbed his head with his hand once more, and looked up at her with something like genuine hurt in his eyes. He said,

"You can't pretend you're not sick. That's not very fair. To anyone."

It wasn't fair that Clary was acting like their cancer was something to hide away, like it was wrong.

"I'm not…I'm not _ashamed_ or anything, it's just-" she started, but Simon's voice cut through hers.

"Of course you're ashamed of it, Clary. Don't pretend that you don't hate how it feels. How everything feels. We all fucking hate it, okay?"

"Okay," she said quietly. She sat back down on the bed, and was surprised to feel his hand on her shoulder. She took a big, shaky breath of second-hand smoke, wishing that the air was clearer. "Don't be mad at me," she told him.

"I'm not mad. I'm disappointed."

"Now you really do sound like my mother."

She felt him shrug, and when she turned back to him, his face was softer than it had been before. This was comforting. She needed comfort from Simon- it might have been the basis of their friendship. He was her comfort, and as much as she loved Simon, she just couldn't look at him without thinking about her own sickness. She could look at Jace and forget about the whole goddamn world.

"I think he'll leave. If I tell him. Who wants to be with the dying girl?" she said. Her brows knitted as she willed her face not to pucker and her tears not to come. She rarely cried in front of Simon. All of her wallowing and tears were reserved for her pillow.

"I wanted her," said Simon. "But I don't count, right?"

"You count, you always counted." She gave him a light punch on the arm. It might have been a too-obviously friendly gesture, but she didn't want to get into the Simon/Clary dating territory again. It was awkward enough to think about, let alone talk about. She let Simon put his arm around her so she could rest her head on his shoulder. He smelled like hospital brand industrial cleaner and weed.

"I can't really promise you anything. You might have to break up with him if he doesn't take it well. It's just how it is," Simon said after a minute.

It was nothing that Clary didn't know, but it still hurt to hear.

"Is that what really happened with you and Mia?" she asked tentatively. She really hoped she wasn't tearing old wounds up. She felt Simon's chest rise as he inhaled.

"She knew I was sick. I think she thought she could…I don't know, make me better? It was all bullshit."

It was the other way around with Clary and Jace; _she _thought Jace could make her better. Maybe he would ruin her, make her worse. In her life, things changed so quickly. The effect he had on her might turn sour if she added anything to their mixture. Their little _thing, _whatever it was, was like a careful cocktail of tagging and music and kissing, and she had no idea what it would be like when she suddenly became the sick girl. Her worst fear was that it would disappear altogether, _he _would disappear altogether.

Simon stubbed out the roach and tossed it into a nearby ashtray. She still didn't know what to say about Mia.

"I'll tell him," she said. She fought off the urge to cross her fingers behind her when she said this. Kids at school used to say that if you crossed your fingers while doing it, it was okay to lie. She wanted to lie. She'd gotten very good at lying about why she was so tired, or why she felt sick, or why she looked so pale. She'd gotten so good at lying to herself about what she was doing. "I know I have to tell him and I will," she said, mostly to convince herself.

"For the record, I'm sorry," Simon said. "For bursting your bubble."

"It was a nice bubble." She ran her hands through her precious hair tiredly. "The past few weeks have been…hardly real, you know? I've felt so normal."

She thought of last night, in the back room of _The Steele, _watching Jace strum on his guitar while he was sprawled out on the couch. His head had been in her lap, and he was letting her run her fingers through his hair. Behind her, she caught bits of Isabelle and Magnus's conversation. They'd been talking about how adorable Clary and Jace were, and it sent shivers through her to think of herself with him. Alec had just seemed amazed that Jace was keeping her around. She thought of the warm interior of the bar, and how it was like a new home away from home, and Jace's friends seemed to be part of her new regimen. Everything had just fit in place. Everything felt normal.

"You _are _normal," said Simon. "You're just sick."


	11. Eleven

Isabelle's voice hummed and slurred along to the song on the radio. It was a song by The Cranberries_, _and even in her drunken state, Isabelle's pretty voice did it justice. The taxi driver kept sneaking glances in the rear-view mirror, probably trying to check out Izzy's legs. Clary tugged down on the other girl's skirt, realizing that it was riding up past her mid-thigh.

The taxi sped along through a dark area of the East Side, a nice area that she hardly visited. She tore her eyes away from the window to look at the meter, which was already at $47.85. It felt like they'd been driving for an eternity, and Clary realized she had no idea where they were going.

Isabelle rested her head on Clary's shoulder, hiccupping. She really was no good at holding her liquor. Earlier, when Clary showed up at the bar, Izzy had been the only one there. Well, she suspected that Alec and Magnus were upstairs in Magnus's apartment, judging by the occasional thumps coming from the ceiling. Isabelle was behind the bar with her on/off boyfriend, the intimidating bartender that refused to serve Clary that first night. Her eyes had lit up when she saw Clary approaching.

"His highness is not here, I'm afraid," she'd said, her words already beginning to slur. There were three empty shot glasses in front of her.

"Oh?" Clary had to admit, Jace's absence had thrown her off. She was used to meeting him under the streetlight by her house. He sometimes beckoned her downstairs with cliché Romeo quotes via text message. Tonight he hadn't called her down, and she set off on her own trying not to think something stupid like, _Romeo, where for art thou, Romeo?_

"He's _studying. _Who spends their Saturday night _studying?_" Izzy had rolled her eyes very dramatically, slumped forward onto the bar. This had reminded Clary of her and Simon's conversation. So Jace did go to school.

"Jace studies?" she'd asked, not bothering to hide the surprise in her voice.

"I know, right? He pretends he's this big badass, but he totally gets straight A's." She'd reached behind her to grab a bottle of a clear liquor. Clary wondered how it was possible that Magnus was still in business with underage drinkers always stealing alcohol directly from the bar.

She tossed back the shot while Clary contemplated what she'd said. Jace never seemed like the _studying _type. There was a cache of things about him she had no clue of. She was going to ask Izzy which school they went to, but then the song changed to something fast and Izzy had perked up, shouting too loudly,

"Let's dance!"

So Clary had let Izzy drag her to the dance floor, and they jumped around to the weird punk music that was blaring out of the speakers. The stage was empty, the music coming from a complicated stereo in the back. There were only about five people at the bar in total, all of them ignoring the music and deep in conversation in the dark corners. Clary had felt very out of place, very exposed, dancing in the middle of a mostly quiet room, but there was something about Isabelle's disregard of social faux pas that was infectious.

She forgot what it was like, hanging out with girls her age. Isabelle was chatty and loud. She talked about sex and told jokes while she drank, sucking Clary into her vortex of laughter and gossip. She learned that Alec's relationship with Magnus was hidden from their parents, and that they thought that Alec was with his friends from a youth music program when he was really here, with his older boyfriend. Clary was so tempted to take advantage of Isabelle's inhibition. She wanted to ask when her parents had taken Jace in, where his real parents were, and every other question that she could think of.

There was something stopping her. She remembered Jace's voice, full of honesty when he told her that he was a foster kid. Unless it came from him, it would be just facts. She wouldn't really know him any better. She let whatever secrets Izzy would tell come naturally, without her prompt.

Now it was nearly one in the morning, and Isabelle had drunkenly flagged down a cab outside the bar, nearly being struck by it in the process. Clary insisted on following her, if only to make sure that Isabelle got home safely. Of course it had nothing to do with the fact that Jace might be where she was going.

In the cab, she'd given the driver an address for the Upper East Side, and that surprised her more than anything.

"You guys are pretty rich, aren't you?" she asked Isabelle as the meter hit $50.00. She thought of the haughty way Alec acted, and it became very believable that their family was well off, but it was almost impossible to imagine Jace as an Upper East Sider. Isabelle sighed and laughed at the same time.

"My Mom's a doctor." Her head lolled back to Clary's shoulder.

"What kind of doctor?" Clary asked. She didn't know how much longer Isabelle would be able to form coherent sentences. She wasn't going to ask the big things, but she wanted to know the little ones.

"Oncologisssst," she said slowly. Clary's hear probably stopped. Her chest gave a painful ache as it tried to catch up with its regular rhythm. Just with that word, her careful facade took a pointed blow. She felt like the cancer inside her was lit up by a thermal light, glowing and giving her away. For all she knew, she could have passed by Jace's mother in the hospital. Isabelle groaned suddenly. "I don't feel good," she whined.

"Hey, man, she better not throw up in my car," the cabby said. Isabelle groaned again, and hiccuped dangerously. Clary looked out at the dark street and back to the meter, pushing thoughts of Oncology to the back of her mind. Isabelle pressed her hand to her mouth and shook her head.

"Just…pull over here," she said, hoping they weren't far from Izzy's home.

Isabelle mumbled something about her purse and Clary dug around in it until she found an alligator skin wallet at the bottom. There was an alarming amount of cash inside it, but Clary pulled out a fifty dollar bill and gave it to the driver. She was able to weakly pull Izzy from the car, and they immediately slumped onto the curb as the cab drove away, taking the light with him.

Clary examined their surroundings. They were on a slow inclining hill, lined with tall houses and buildings on both sides of the street. There were dim streetlights, but it was dark. The darkness combined with the eerie quiet unnerved Clary. She really had no experience with the Upper East Side. Normally, she imagined that all these houses were filled with glamorous, ungrateful people asleep under their high thread-count bed sheets, but Jace lived here, too, and he certainly wasn't some kind of trust fund baby.

Isabelle's head hung between her legs. She coughed, and then the coughing turned to gagging, so Clary quickly bunched Izzy's long hair behind her. Before she could get out of the way, Isabelle unfortunately turned her head threw up all over Clary.

"Oh, God," Isabelle coughed. "Clary, I'sorry," she tried to say. She threw up again, this time aiming it at the ground.

Clary shook herself. She was no stranger to vomit, even other people's, but it didn't make it any less vile. Isabelle was about three minutes from passing out, she figured, and she still had no clue where the hell they were.

"Izzy, where's your house?"

But Isabelle let the question go unanswered as she lied her head down on the sidewalk. Normally, she would have tried to keep her upright, but Clary was trying to spot a street sign with no luck. She sighed heavily, beginning to feel her sickly damp shirt cling to her stomach.

There was only one thing to do. She reached into her pocket and retrieved her phone. She sent a haste text to Jace, hoping to God he was still up.

**Lost in your neighborhood. Izzy's out cold. **

She hadn't really planned this far. She wanted to see Izzy safely home, and maybe she would have caught a glimpse of what Jace's house looked like from the outside, but she didn't think Jace would even know she was near.

She waited for maybe thirty seconds. Then her ringtone went off, and she saw that he was calling her. Her heart gave another little jump. She had never talked to him on the phone before, and there was something nerve-wracking about that.

"Hello?" she answered.

"Where the hell are you?" he asked. His voice sounded strange- not angry, but exasperated. Maybe he was a little shocked.

"That's a great question." She looked around again at the tall houses and the clean street. Without the sound of honking car horns and all-night city chatter, this place was a whole new world.

"Where's Izzy?"

"She's passed out. We were just…I was just making sure she got home okay and then the cabby kind of kicked us out."

"How far did you get from the bar?" he asked. Did he sound worried or was it just her?

"About fifty dollars on the meter." She hoped that this was enough information for him. The thought of staying here all night, on the curb, covered in puke, made her tired. The cops would pick them up before dawn, probably.

"You're not far. Stay there, I'm coming."

She wasn't going anywhere. After he hung up, she checked that Isabelle hadn't choked on her own sick, and pulled her head into her lap. They were both pretty disgusting, smelling truly foul. It occurred to Clary that Jace was going to see her like this. When she thought of her chemo-self, something like how she looked now was what she imagined; dishevelled, pale, and covered in vomit.

Izzy began softly snoring in her lap. Clary couldn't decide if she was regretting even leaving her room tonight. She remembered Jace saying something disapproving of Isabelle's drinking habits, and he was right. She was a messy drunk.

In the quiet, Clary heard the fast approaching sound of footsteps. She looked both ways, her head whipping back and forth. He came from over the hill, a dark figure that was unmistakably him. In such a short time, she'd already memorized his gait. He seemed to see them, and then he broke into a little run, coming into view under a streetlight. Finally, he was wearing a coat.

"Jesus…" he said when he saw them, or rather smelled them. She looked up at him from her spot on the ground. His hair was messier than usual. Perhaps he'd been asleep.

"She threw up…everywhere."

For a moment, he just stood there, shaking his head. Isabelle snorted in her sleep, and Jace looked down at her with disgust. He bent over them both and grimaced, pulling her into his arms like she weighed nothing. Clary thought this wasn't the first time he had to carry her home. He managed to reach his hand out to help Clary up, tucking Izzy's head into the crook of his neck. She felt a ridiculous pang of jealousy go through with her. She wished that he was carrying her home instead.

"She shouldn't be allowed to drink," he said when Clary had stood. She looked down and surveyed her sweater and jeans. There was a disgusting stain down the front and on her legs.

"I should have steered clear," she said, pulling the shirt away from her body. Jace looked at her for what seemed like a long time. She looked back at him, right in his eyes, as if they were in a standoff. Would he tell her to go home now? It could be that he just didn't want her this close to him, that he didn't want her near his secret Upper East Side life. She didn't expect him to say,

"You can clean up at my house, if you want."

She let out a breath that she was holding and nodded her head. She followed a few steps behind him as he walked away with Isabelle still sleeping in his arms. It was a situation comparable to Charlie's, being offered her golden ticket to Wonka's mysterious factory. They trudged up the clean, neatly paved, quiet hill. She had no idea what was waiting for her on the other side.

They said nothing, and she couldn't tell if he was quiet because he was embarrassed by the situation, or because the whole East Side was asleep. The houses they passed seemed to get more and more lavish. They were white and gleaming, some held in by fences, some tall brownstones that were much nicer than Clary's old building. After five minutes, they came to the end of the street, to a house on the left side that was decorated for fall. A cluster of pumpkins was arranged on the porch that was held up by tall, white columns. There was a second story balcony on top of the columns. The brick was grey, still pristine, though it looked old. It was a beautiful house.

Jace went ahead up the steps while Clary followed blindly. It was so strange. This place was not the setting she would have chosen for Jace's life.

"_I've lived in a lot of places and they weren't all nice." _

She wondered if Jace lived his life in extremes, if he'd known poor parents who cashed his foster checks for cigarettes. How was it that he now had doctors for parents, a beautiful house that was probably worth a million dollars? What did it cost him to end up here, she wondered?

He turned to her before opening the door, his finger on his lips, saying _shh. _She wasn't going to make a sound. For the first time, she felt like she should just be a casual observer. They entered into a foyer that was beautifully decorated with vases, there were wreaths on distant doors that led to unknown rooms, and the whole place smelled like the freshness flowers. A staircase wound up to a second floor that was pitch black. Jace crept up the stairs and they hardly creaked under his and Izzy's weight. She was trying so hard to drink everything in, she almost forgot that she was meant to follow him.

"The room at the end of the hall is mine," he whispered to her when they got to the second story. It was hardly was another decorated foyer, as nice as the first.

In one of these many rooms, his foster parents slept soundly. His oncologist mother was here, unaware that a potential patient was lurking around her house. She shook off the blind fear that the thought gave her and watched Jace recede down the other hallway that must lead to Isabelle's room. She swallowed, her feet touching down on the hardwood floor as lightly as possible until she was in front of the white door that was his.

How many times had she thought about this? She turned the knob, letting the door swing gently open. It didn't creak.

Inside, the room was bathed in moonlight. Like Simon's room, the curtains were wide open, but that was the only similarity to Simon's room there was. She looked around, stunned by the sheer _normality _of it. She'd been expecting clutter and clothes, ashtrays and empty bottles of beer, the smell of nicotine and posters on the wall. Instead, the room was painted a plain blue, bare of any art or posters. The bed was in the middle of the room, perfectly made, with white sheets. There wasn't a scrap of clothing on the floor. The only thing that seemed remotely right about this room was the guitar stand in the corner.

She walked into it further, breathing in the same smell of flowers. On one side of the room, there was a dresser that held no photographs. She came around to one side of Jace's bed and felt her stomach explode with sudden excitement. This was the place where Jace slept. She sat down tenderly, trying to be a figment of the room, trying to impose on the perfection. On the bedside table, there was a little box that looked old and out of place. It was the only thing that was out of place.

Before she could touch the box, she heard him coming down the hallway. Jace was always very quick. He slipped into the room, closing the door in what seemed like a flash. When he saw her sitting on his bed, he smiled like a lion.

"Your room is…neat," she said. The statement was so painfully obvious, she wished she could take it back and say something else. He smirked.

"I like order."

She stood up to get closer to him, but realized she was still covered in Isabelle's vomit. Noticing this also, Jace said,

"You can shower in here." He moved to the door she hadn't noticed, an en suite bathroom. He flipped on the light and she saw that the bathroom was just as impeccable as his bedroom. "I'll wash your clothes."

She watched from the threshold as he went to the shower, a glass box that offered no modesty. He turned on the water and the white noise sound of it rushing filled up the room along with steam. Her heart thudded in her chest as she decided to move into the room. He was looking at her like she wasn't covered in vomit. He was looking at her like he was going to kiss her. She shakily closed the door behind her, for some reason, sealing them in the room with the steam and everything else that they weren't saying.

Maybe it was because tomorrow was her next chemo appointment, or maybe it was because he'd let her into his room without any hesitation, or maybe it was because she couldn't stand being covered in vomit any longer, but she became the other Clary and she undid the buttons of her jeans, slid them down her legs, and kicked them away. She started on her shirt.

Jace smiled. She didn't expect that, but he smiled, clearly amused. She tried not to seem so insecure, but she found herself drawing her arms across her chest anyway. He stepped closer to her, fully clothed and stark next to her in her underwear. He leaned in and placed a kiss against her exposed collarbone, and it made her drop her arms back to her sides in total compliance. She thought he might try to _do something, _he might try to touch her without the fabric between them, but he didn't. He bent down and scooped up the soiled clothes at her feet.

"I'll be back," he said.

She watched him leave and shut the door behind her, unsure if it was rejection or a promise of something more. In any case, she was here, and she was naked, and there was a shower. As unabashed as it felt, she got rid of her bra and underwear, and stepped into the hot water.

_A/N- I don't really have any designated update days, but I do promise that the next chapter will be soon. _


	12. Twelve

_A/N- I'm sure some of you have been waiting for this for about eleven chapters. Cheers for sticking it out!_

A white towel was hanging on the hook beside the shower. She took it and pressed her wet face into the fabric, breathing the smell in deeply. It didn't smell like Jace. Nothing about this house really seemed like him at all. When she wrapped the towel around her, she turned to the medicine cabinet over the sink. It was invasive, but she wanted to find some sign that this house wasn't just a figment of her imagination. Opening the cabinet, she saw the usual things; shaving cream, Asprin, cotton swabs, all orderly lined up on the shelves.

There was only one thing that didn't belong- a tube of lipstick. She took it without thinking and uncapped it. It was a luscious red, a color that Clary would never have the nerve to put on in public. She knew it could have been Izzy's, but some part of her believed that this was a relic of an old girlfriend. That ridiculous jealousy started to twist in her stomach like a vine.

She painted her lips with it until they were a bold red, very alarming against her white skin. Her freckles seemed to pop out more with the color. Then she used the towel to dry her hair as much as she could. Flipping it up again, there was another person looking at her in the mirror, with wild red hair that was going in every direction and bright red lips. Her skin even had a pinkness to it that she hadn't seen since before chemo. She put the lipstick back in the medicine cabinet, tucked the towel carefully, tightening it around her breasts.

She had no idea what she was doing, why she was wearing someone else's lipstick, why she wasn't wearing clothes in Jace's house. She thought of that kiss he put on her collarbone, and her whole body gave a nervous jump. If she didn't leave the bathroom now, she never would. _Breathe, _she thought, _and just don't think about anything. _She opened the door, wishing the girl in the mirror good luck.

A cloud of steam followed her out of the room. It was still dark in there, and the bathroom light cast a long illumination of the bed. Jace was sitting on it, his arms comfortable behind him, waiting for her. On his lap, there was a stack of neatly folded clothes. He looked up as she shut the light off and stepped further into the dark room.

"You can wear Isabelle's clothes until yours dry," he said. He whispered it, but it was almost like his voice was in her head. It was the only sound in the whole house, in the whole world.

Clary turned to the left where the dresser was. Surely it was where he kept all his clothes, his shirts and old jeans, and boxers and socks. Something was giving her a lot of nerve. She watched out of the corner of her eye for his reaction as she opened the drawer. When he didn't stop her, she reached in and took a familiar shirt, threadbare and sleeveless, some old band from the 80's posing on the front of it.

"Can I wear this?" she asked.

Jace half smiled and shrugged,

"If you want."

She did. She looked from him to the shirt and back again. It would be long enough to cover her, but she had no underwear. She was already wearing only a towel, and she'd forgotten this fact until she noticed that his eyes kept drifting to where the towel was tied, pushing her boobs together. She hadn't even meant for that to happen. Suddenly, the energy in the room went crimson. She was almost tempted to just drop the damn towel, but there was still a sliver of self-control inside her that protested. She hid her smile behind her hands.

"Turn around," she told him.

Jace bit his lip, goddamn him, and stood up. He went to the window on the other side of the room with his back turned. For a moment, she was worried that she might cast a naked reflection in that window he was looking out of, but then she decided that she didn't care. When her towel fell, she felt her heart slow down for once, until it was like time was at a standstill. She was completely naked, and feet from him. Her eyes bore into the back of his head as she considered what she could do at the present moment. If she waited, he might turn around and look at her. Did she want that? He'd seen her in a bra and underwear, but that was the same thing as a bathing suit, in her opinion. Even Simon had seen her in her bra.

With herself so exposed, she remembered that this was the body of a sick girl. She was weak, had more baby fat than muscle. Her face may be red, but the rest of her was marble-white. She had an expanse of freckles on her shoulders, on her thighs. He was going to see everything if he turned around.

She decided to slip his shirt on. It was so thin, almost like nothing against her skin. The sleeves were wide, showing off the sides of her breasts if she lifted her arms up. It fell just below her ass. She would not bend over.

"Okay," she whispered.

He came back over to her, and when he got closer, she saw that he had a confused expression. He stood a foot away from her, brought his thumb up to her mouth and brushed the pad of it over her lips. She wanted to kiss every one of his fingers.

"Your lips?"

"I found your lipstick," she said. He was much taller than her and she sometimes forgot this. Looking up, she puckered her lips and batter her eyelashes. He laughed, very low in his throat.

"Aline's lipstick," he said. He touched her lips again with his thumb.

She felt the vines in her stomach coil in revulsion at the name, but she wanted to seem cool. She knew he wasn't a saint, that she wasn't the first to be nearly naked in front of him. She knew this, and yet She wondered what made Aline special, special enough that he would keep her lipstick in his room to remember her.

"Ex-girlfriend?"

Jace gave a small shake to his head.

"Family friend."

Then he bent down and retrieved the towel she left on the floor. When he was down there momentarily, she felt him breathe against her thigh and something ached inside her.

"Did you sleep with her?" she asked. The moment the words were out of her mouth, she wanted them back. She didn't know if Jace was open about his old girlfriends, or if she even wanted to know the answer.

"Once," he said. "I wasn't really her type."

She wanted to wrap her hands around her stomach to hold everything in. He was so nonchalant. She didn't think she possessed the willpower to be so careless. Everything mattered, every moment, every tense second that passed, every thought that popped in her head about _wanting him _and wanting _everything about him. _He was so casual as he brought a corner of the towel toward her lips. Disregarding the stain it made, he wiped away the red.

"You don't like it?" she asked, words slurring as he dragged her lip down with the towel.

"I love it," he said, then dropped the towel. "But I don't want lipstick all over my face."

With that, his arms went to her lower back and pushed her forward. She slammed against him, almost painfully. He sighed into her mouth as she nestled into his arms further. Her tongue was fearless, eager to dance, eager to taste him. His breathing went ragged, and she knew that this kiss was different than any other one. Neither of them were tired, and she was in his room with him, where she was starting to suspect that few people had been. There was a bed nearby. She was practically naked. All these things were a part of an equation that equalled one thing, one thing that made her entire self shake with fear and excitement.

Her shirt rode up, leaving her bare below the waist, but he didn't look down. She wondered if he felt the heat coming off her. He was cool, she was warming him with her body.

When he pulled away for air, he took his hands away from her back and the shirt fell down to cover her again. His cheeks were flushed, a telltale sign that he'd seen the place between her legs, as shadowed as it might have been. Her heart flared up along with a vicious spell of self awareness. She was about to panic, maybe back out and run home, but then he kissed her again, while his arms crisscrossed and tugged his own shirt over his head. It fell next to the towel.

She'd seen his chest once, a few days ago, when he was swapping shirts after a show. It was much better close up. He was skinny, but there were bumps on his stomach that signified strong muscles. She could see him doing sit ups in the morning,

There was a tattoo on his chest, a heart. It was red and outlined in black. She traced it with her fingers and made a mental note to ask him about all the tattoos on his skin. There were words on his arm, things in Latin, and a bird on his hip. It was black and flying up through the lines his ribs made when he breathed in. She touched the bird, too. Then up on his collarbone, she placed a kiss, like had on hers. She hoped it would burn there like a scar. Every time he kissed her, he cut a permanent rune of himself in her skin.

He ran his hands up and down the shirt she wore, smoothing it against her skin. The shirt was so thin, it felt just like there was no barrier. It stunned her how much she liked the feeling. His thumbs began to dip into the edge of the sleeves, and it revealed hints of her breasts as the fabric pulled down. He looked like he could rip it away, and she thought he might, but he took his hands off her.

His eyes were full of the question, whether or not it was okay for him unbutton the top of his jeans. She watched his fingers sitting still on the button. She thought his breath sounded shaky, but her heart was so loud. Her heart always raced when he was with her. The first time she felt his hand touch her chest, in one of the corners of _The Steele, _she remembered liking it because lips weren't enough anymore, but her heart still raced all the same.

She kissed his collarbone again, and again, as her hands stayed near the hem of his jeans. She could feel his hands moving, slowly undoing the button, the zipper. She leaned her forehead against his chest, and looking down, she could see him slide his jeans down, until there was only the dark fabric of his boxers. Suddenly, they were moving backward, him pulling her by her hip, and Clary knew where they were going.

He first sat, and she was taller than him for once. He pressed his face into her stomach and kissed her through the fabric. It tickled dangerously, and that ache in the pit of her groaned. She might have groaned, too, but soft. It was so quiet in the room, everyone else was dead to the world, and it was just the bed, and fabric rustling, intimate sounds of suctioning lips.

She didn't know what to do with herself, so she just let him tug on her hip until she widened her legs and sat across his lap. His hands held her there firmly, and then she followed him down, attached at the lips, until she was lying on top of him. The position felt awkward to her, she was going to slide off him, pull him down to her, but Jace had already flipped her over before she could pull away. He hovered on top like he had under her bed.

This was not under a bed; it was on top of one, and they out in the open. Clary's paranoid mind briefly pictured someone walking in on them.

The shirt had ridden up enough that her belly button showed, and Jace was looking down. She wished that she had kept her underwear on, but it was too late. She was naked against his boxers. He made a deep, almost whining sound at the back of his throat, saying,

"Clary…"

Something deep and instinctual caused her to lift up her hips so that they were touching, She felt him against her, creating a pressure between them both. She shook with nervousness. His hands were steadier, moving the shirt up, his head bowed and she felt him kissing her breasts, though all she saw was his blonde hair splayed on her chest. She made a quiet sound when he slid the shirt up her arms.

Then he just got up. She was so shocked by the sudden loss of him, the sudden cold. She quickly pulled her knees up to cover waist, and her arms went across her chest, sitting up. Her eyes followed him moving to the bedside table, taking something out, and shutting it. He moved neutrally, but then she noticed that his boxers had grown considerably in one place, and she remembered just how naked she was again.

When he came back to the bed, he kneeled in front of her. He let his finger trail up down her leg until his hand rested on he ankle. She peeked in his hand and saw a white plastic package.

"We don't have to," he said. "If you don't want to,"

_Oh God, _she thought, _is it actually happening? _She had imagined her first time enough that she'd picked out several viable scenarios. In these scenarios, she'd imagine that she'd lose her virginity to Simon or some other sick boy in the ward, on a mutual agreement that it was just too pathetic to die a virgin. She might have said yes because she really _didn't _want to die a virgin, and this was as good an opportunity as any. But really, it was Jace, and she still wanted him, wanted every little bit of him.

"Come here," she said. Her cheeks were probably as red as Aline's lipstick. She let him push her back onto the bed, and his hands went to her inner thigh. No one had ever touched her there. No one had ever gone as far as his fingers were going. She wanted to hide her face as he put pressure against her, but all she could do was tilt her head up and try not to have a heart attack. It was electric, shocking her hips up.

When she looked back down at him, she saw that he had lost the boxers. She saw him, and thoughts popped into her head like, _you still hardly know him, _and _you're dying. _

She ignored them. His hands were still moving on her. She breathed heavily, pulling herself onto her elbows to kiss him again because it had been too long. While they kissed, she heard the sound of the plastic ripping.

_This is happening. This is really happening. _

She gasped, too loud, so she buried her face into his shoulder. She felt him slowly moving into her, slow but consistent. His pelvis touched hers, and Clary felt her virginity leave in the instant. It hurt, probably worse than she thought it would. He breathed in her ear, and she loosened her grip on his arm. She told him to wait, she had to get a grip of herself. She was so overwhelmed by the feeling of him inside her. She was overwhelmed that this was her, here with him, doing this. Two thoughts went through her head, _my mom would kill me, _and _I love him. _

He kissed her neck, gently moving his hips away from hers. She winced, despite herself, and he noticed. Pulling away from her neck, he leaned against her forehead and asked,

"Have you ever done this?"

She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head. He sighed, hoarse and full of an emotion that Clary couldn't put her finger on. She was almost getting used to the way they fit together. She unclenched the muscles in her thighs, relaxing against him.

"You should have said," he whispered. He was looking in her eyes, all full of concern, stripping her even more bare, if that was possible.

She didn't know what to say. Maybe she should have told him. Maybe he didn't want this with her if it was so special. But it was special. Clary thought of the things he'd told her, the way he'd let her in, the fact that he let her in his room, let her wear his shirt. She saw the street art they did in the dead of night, and saw how it was so perfect. She thought of the surprise on Alec and Magnus's faces whenever Jace kissed her in front of them. She counted the three weeks that they'd known each other and the three years she'd been this same Clary, sick and alone, and there was no denying that these three weeks had been living. She wanted everything that living had to offer. Like him, meeting her at the hips so she could feel what it was like to press someone else right into your entire self. She would remember this forever.

"I want it to be you," she said. To prove this, the moved her own hips until he was all the way inside again. He hissed, but said nothing further. It still stung and ached, uncomfortable, but she tried to focus on the warmth, the electricity, what was good about it.

He moved again, lying her back down. With her legs spread, it was easier. Jace lowered himself completely over her, kissing, touching, moving his hips. He kept moving, his own breath heavy with hers. There were so many feelings, so much happening, Clary found herself tensing all her muscles, just to curb everything, to let it all flow to that one spot where they were together. She thought over and over, _is this happening? _

She knew he was close. He bit her neck like a vampire, his voice a whimper, a hum against her skin. She tried to move her hips up to meet his movements, but it was still too new to get the hang of, and it still hurt. She felt his hands rub over her body, between her legs, where the electricity built, and then he stopped moving, pressing himself so strongly against her that she thought he might disappear inside her completely. His breath hitched as he came.

She would remember that forever, too.

A few moments later, he kissed her deeply. Her body was still tense and waiting to be pushed over. She didn't have any more time to be embarrassed before he touched her, fast with his hands, and it was much like doing it yourself- except it wasn't. He kept kissing her, allowing her to stifle the noises she was making. The world exploded, and he was still inside her, so he must have felt it. They were both sweating.

When it was over, he kissed her temple. She breathed out a puff of air when he slid out and away from her. She stayed, circled by his arms, his chest against her back, until the breathing subsided.

"I'll be right back," he whispered against her neck.

He grabbed something, disappeared into the bathroom, and she was left alone for a few moments. She sat up, feeling the soreness below her waist.

They had done it all, been naked and vulnerable together, without any barriers, totally open. She'd never felt so open, and yet she was still so closed off.

Didn't she promise Simon that she wouldn't lie? Jace had never lied to her, she realized, though he didn't say everything, he never lied. He answered her questions truthfully, and when he asked her why she was so pale, or why she looked sick, or why she was tired, she lied her ass off. The guilt was like a punch to the stomach.

He came out of the washroom, in his boxers, carrying something in his hands. Maybe she should have slid under the covers, but she was still immobilized on the bed, horrified with herself. _What are you doing?_ They'd gone too far for her to still be this pretend person, this "night Clary". Bits of herself, her sick self, were already starting to bleed into the night. She was starting to feel overwhelmingly tired.

He came over to her and gently took one of her arms. He was holding her underwear, smiling lion-like, she watched him and felt him tickle her skin as he slid them back up her legs. She really should have kept them on because nothing was sexier than the look of sureness and concentration on his face as they slid up her hips.

He slipped the shirt back over her head. Then asked her,

"Are you tired?"

She nodded her head. If she opened her mouth, she might say something to ruin it, and damn her, she still couldn't say it. She just couldn't.

They tucked themselves into the bed, under the soft sheets. It smelled like Jace here as she breathed in. Their skin slid against each other's smoothly, creating warmth as he tucked against him. She was so tired now. They breathed slowly for long stretches of time, sleep dangled above their heads. She never thought she would feel what it was like to be in someone's bed, in their arms, in their life. She wanted in his life. She wanted him in hers, but her life was not something that she liked. It wasn't something that she wanted someone else to experience. If only her life could be as simple as this; as simple as the way they fit together and painted together and laughed together.

Against her neck, he breathed,

"I think I love you."

Something in her struck, bitter sweetness, a sick mixture of satisfaction and longing that she couldn't explain.

"I think I do, too," she said. That was another lie; she _knew _she did.


	13. Thirteen

_A/N- I'm sorry for the lack of updates. Writers block…*sigh*_

Her plan was to wake early and head to the hospital on the subway. She imagined Jace waking with her, being all lit in early dawn light, all blue and comforting, and bidding her farewell with his sleepy kisses at the door. This never happened, though, because Clary awoke with an upset stomach in the night. She'd only been asleep for about two hours. It was not yet dawn. She was wrapped in a knot of his arms and his bed sheets, but still unnaturally cold. The shirt she wore, thin and not hers, caused her to shiver, caused her to question a fever. She wanted to stay in the warmth, there in the bed. It would have been other-worldly to stay. But she couldn't stay.

She gently tugged herself out of Jace's grip. She got out of his bed, shivering in her underwear. The band shirt was practically nothing against her skin. Her lower half ached, like she thought it would, and it was a reminder of what they'd done. Walking over to the other side of the room, she fought the overwhelming urge to throw up and hold herself for warmth.

The clock said it was five in the morning. Three hours from now she was meant to be sitting in a hospital bed, hooked up to her next round. Treatment. She couldn't miss treatment. No matter what. No matter that she was hopelessly fucking in love. And no matter that she was a big, empty fake.

She collected her bra from the bathroom. Jace had hung it on the doorknob, and she didn't know if she should have laughed at this. She left him sleeping. She left not knowing whether to close the bedroom door or not.

Creeping down the stairs in search of the laundry room, she found herself noticing the photos on the wall. There were several framed, professional portraits of Alec and Isabelle. She noticed the hard, heavy, black, faces of who could only be Jace's foster parents. The Lightwoods were the type of family that probably had a fancy plot in a graveyard somewhere. They probably had lavish family reunions, they probably had their own special places in country clubs. They golfed, as she could see from a framed photo of a dark haired man swinging a 9 iron. Jace's father. Foster-father. She didn't know what to call them, she wasn't acquainted enough.

There was only one photo of Jace that she could see. It was near the bottom of the stairs, and she stopped herself, surprised by the sudden blondeness amid a sea of black haired portraits. It was Jace, younger, gangly and pubescent. He was maybe fourteen in this photo, looking behind his shoulder at the camera. There was a wide lake in front of him and his arm was swung around another boy's. It was Alec, probably, but he was not looking at the camera the way Jace was. They both looked like they were about to go running into that still water. Swim trunks, young and tanned summer skin. His face was so thin, almost gaunt. Clary's fingers gently brushed over the glass, simultaneously she brushed over the empty spot inside herself where Jace was. She felt him there like some kind of infection, but there was so much about it that was uncovered. She wanted to compare photos with him. Where her pictures would be in hospital settings, with freshly shaven heads, he might have these few photos of his skinny, lonely self.

The laundry room was on the first floor. She found it in the dark with stubbed toes. Her sweater and jeans were soft, still warm from tumbling in the drier. She slipped the sweater on overtop the shirt she borrowed from him, deciding that she was not above stealing. She was already a liar.

Eventually, she slipped out of the house and made it about a block and a half before throwing up in some East Sider's bushes. If it was chemo or nerves, she didn't really know.

The subway station was mostly dead, since it was too early for the commute to work, and too late for the party goers. She rode in the almost empty car, a sort of weightlessness about her that was entirely unpleasant. She was looking at herself very objectively, at the mess that she was making of this shitty life she'd been given. The honourable thing would have been to tell her boyfriend the truth. Tell him that he was invested in poor stocks. She was a bad catch. And it would have been so nicely self-deprecating of her to think only this, and put all the blame and fault on herself, but she also felt that uneasy pull of self-pity.

Being a cancer kid, and having all that pity constantly rained on you by your parents, and the doctors, and the nurses, and your peers, you would think that Clary would have no room for self-pity. The fact of the matter was, however, that she was feeling sorry for herself and she wanted to cry her eyes out.

The train rattled on down the underground tracks, the lights flickered, and the homeless looking guy on the other end of the car gave a death-rattle cough. Nothing about the world was changing on the outside, New York was trivial as ever, but Clary felt like last night (and pretty much every night since she'd met Jace) had turned everything into this upside down vision. Every night had been an experience with this tenuous connection to this other Clary that was so different from herself. And it had been such a veil, such a lie, she realized this. There was never some "night owl Clary". That other Clary was just herself, just herself ignoring the sickness long enough to enjoy life.

So last night, they'd done it, and they'd said it, and it was real now. She was not some alternate persona pretending to be in love with him. He was not in love with this alternate persona. He was in love with _her. _

As much as that simple fact filled her with happiness, it was also twisted with a deep sadness. It made the fear of death that much closer. It made her hate what she was. She hated what she was doing. She hated this lie.

The train ride took about an hour and a half with all the stops, so by the time she emerged above ground in her neighbourhood, it was nearly six in the morning. She made it up the steps of her fire escape, feeling like every step shook the metal enough to wake up the whole building. Finally, climbing into the window that she left open just a crack, she felt the plush of the carpet on her feet. And then she looked up.

"Clary," said her mother. She was sitting on her bed with crossed arms and crossed legs. "You know I come in to check on you, and sometimes you're just not here. I don't know where you go or what you're doing when you leave."

"Mom," she started, but Jocelyn stood up and she looked sharply at her.

"It's 6:30 AM, Clary. Your appointment was at 6:15. They had to reschedule you for late tonight. That means the whole night at the hospital, Clary."

"I thought it was at 8:15." Had she really lost track of her appointments? Chemo wasn't something that she was supposed to take lightly. It wasn't like missing a dentist appointment.

"I have no idea what you're doing out there Clary. What are you doing?" She pointed out the window.

Clary considered spinning another web of lies to get her out of this. She could easily get Simon to vouch for her, and it wouldn't be a big deal if she said that Simon and her were off doing things. Jocelyn knew about Jace, though, at least a little bit, so maybe that lie wouldn't work. The stress of trying to come up with some excuse was eating away at her stomach very quickly. She opened her mouth, and before she could stop herself, the truth came out.

"I was with Jace."

Her mom breathed in a long breath through her nose. She nodded.

"I thought so." She sat back down on Clary's bed, but Clary stayed standing by the window. The cold morning air hit her back. Jocelyn said,

"Do I want to know what you were doing?"

Clary touched the back of her neck as she thought about last night. The sounds of his breathing as he lost control. His guitar calluses brushing over every part of her.

"We were…we-," she said. God, why was she telling her mother this? "I shouldn't have done it."

"Done what, Clary?" Her voice was so tight.

"Done _it._"

Jocelyn shook her head, and then Clary started crying. She sat down on the carpet, put her head in her hands, and cried. She couldn't stop now that it started. She sobbed an endless trail of sobs, losing control of her voice. It hurt. Everything with Jace should have been perfect, but now it hurt because she knew that soon it would end. Soon, she would bring the hammer down on this perfect thing and shatter it.

"Baby, what happened?" her mother's voice said. She didn't look up, though. She couldn't bring herself to pull her head out of her hands. She felt Jocelyn on the carpet next to her, pulling her head down to her shoulder. She cried against her mother's soft sweater for awhile without listening.

"What happened?" she asked again.

"I love him," she said softly. Her breath rattled and she coughed. She made a mess of her mother's shirt, but Jocelyn would never care.

"What did he do?" Jocelyn's voice was tight again, but her arms around her daughter were tighter.

"He didn't do anything," Clary said. "God, Mom, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry I lied."

"Lied?"

"He loves me and I haven't even- I _can't _- I can't do it to him, Mom." Clary sobbed again, another long, seemingly endless wave of despair pushing her tears out like sad rain.

"You don't want him to know that you're sick?"

"I don't want to be sick."

Clary pulled her messy face away from her mom's sweater, and she looked at her mother's eyes which were red-rimmed and close to tears themselves. Jocelyn smoothed her hair back.

"I don't want you to be sick either, baby."

She helped Clary up and guided her over to the bed. Exhaustion was wearing her down now. She felt her stiff, tired limbs drag along until the soft embrace of linen and cushion enveloped her. She continued to softly cry. Jocelyn lied down in the bed next to her, pulled up all the sheets so that they were bundled and burrowed. She held Clary against her chest.

"I'm sorry I missed the appointment. I'm sorry."

"Stop being sorry, Clary. You're allowed to mess up. You're a teenager."

This caused Clary to laugh, which was hard to do, trying to pull a speck of laughter through the heavy weight of sadness. She breathed in her mother's scent and for the first time, realized that she was allowing her mother to be there to hold her together. It had nothing to do with vomiting or medicine administration, and maybe that's why she was letting her. She didn't need another nurse, she needed this, her mother.

"Tell me about him," Jocelyn said. Clary took a big breath. What could she say about him? How could she describe him? She didn't try to premeditate it, she just started to talk and the words came so easily.

"He's really tall. Compared to me, anyway, he's tall. My head fits perfectly under his chin, you know? So when he hugs me it's like…it's like," she said, stopping to sniffle. "It's like perfect. And he makes believe that he's this bad guy, that he's some kind of rebel or whatever, but I think he's really smart, and those bad guys, they just don't care like he does. He cares about everything."

Jocelyn began rubbing small circles in her back, and Clary continued to spill out everything she knew about Jace.

"His family is really rich. His foster parents. His mother is an oncologist, I think, and I'm so worried that…that she'll recognize me. I was in his house and I just kept thinking that I could be one of her patients or something, and how would that look, right? His house was…so big and he said he used to live in worse places. I think…he was probably abused, but we don't really talk about it. There's all this stuff we don't know about each other, but it's like it doesn't matter. I don't know- I don't know how it doesn't matter, but when I see him and talk to him, it's just like…I just…I wish I could call it something stupid, and call it 'puppy love'. But it doesn't feel like that."

She expected her mother to say something about it, to tell her that she was too young to know what real love was like, but Jocelyn just stayed quiet. So Clary kept on.

"He plays guitar in this band and he's so good, Mom. He makes everyone dance and he makes everything…all lit up."

"Your father was in a band," her mother said suddenly.

"He was?"

"He was a singer. He was the same way. Everyone loved him." Jocelyn's voice seemed a bit far away. This made Clary's nerves jump.

"Is that how you met him?"

"We met at a protest against the UN. Back when the Rwandan war was happening. He was the organizer, had a big megaphone and made all these… amazing speeches. Everyone loved him there, too."

"Did you love him?"

Jocelyn was quiet for a long time and Clary forgot about her own sadness as anticipation settled in. Finally, Jocelyn said,

"At first I did. But things changed, honey. We'll talk about it some other time. I promise."

Clary sighed as her mother's hand brushed away her hair. This was the most she had ever heard about her father in one sitting. She imagined her mother, an angry protestor, waving a picket sign and chanting something anti-government in a crowd. She imagined her father, a faceless man above everyone, fist pumping and shouting into a megaphone. It was a nice image, it was clearer than anything else she had come up with herself.

When she was little, she would pretend that her father was something awesome and impressive like an astronaut. Maybe he was gone because he'd gotten lost out in space. Or maybe he had been a spy, and was still deep undercover somewhere. Sometimes, she'd even imagine that Luke was her real dad, and that there was some unknown reason why he was living as this book owner alias. She had even asked him once,

"_Luke, are you my dad?" _

And he'd laughed, kind of quietly, and said,

"_Oh, I wish Clary." _

She had not fully understood what he meant when he said that, but thinking about it now that she was older, she knew exactly why Luke was so regretful. Sixteen years of loving her mother had crystallised him into this waiting, hopeful guy. A sixteen year tug-of-war with Jocelyn, always wanting for her to lay her cards on the table, but it never happening. He wished he was her father because he wished Jocelyn was his wife.

After a while, Jocelyn asked Clary what she wanted to do. What did she want to do about Jace, about her cancer, about the problem.

"I want to tell him." Her voice was not sturdy. "I don't want anything to change. And then I want to get better."

Her mother sighed, as if she was now bearing the weight of her daughter's heartbreak as well. Clary thought that talking about it might make her feel better, but it didn't change much. She still cupped Jace in her hands like he was a bit of smoke, but it was getting old. It was getting too drawn out.

Soon, her hair would fall out and she'd shave it off as not to prolong the inevitable. What would she do, wear a wig when she was with him? Pretty soon, she might not be able to be with him like she was last night. Pretty soon, everything would come apart as easily as a house of card falls.

Later that night, when her mother woke her up, and she pulled her worn out body from the bed, she felt heavier than ever before despite the fact that she was steadily losing weight.

They went to the hospital and commenced the chemo appointment, but beforehand, they were meant to meet the doctor in her office. This doctor was not Dr. Franz, but someone who apparently specialized in at-home treatment. She looked at her mother questioningly.

"At home care? But that's…that's way too much mom. That's out of our league."

Jocelyn tucked her purse tightly against her side and shrugged.

"It's not full time at home care, honey, I just wanted to meet with her about getting a dispenser. They have a new system, and the insurance policies are changing. It might be doable."

At home chemo. It sounded too good to be true. She speechlessly followed her mother through the door of the office after the nurse called them from the waiting room. It was later, and most of the doctors had probably gone home, but this one was still sitting behind her organized desk, and had still made this late appointment. The largest file cabinet she'd ever seen took up most of the room. The lights were surprisingly dimmer in here, creating a more homey feel than she'd ever felt in a hospital.

"You must be Clary and Jocelyn?" said the woman behind the desk. She was very professional looking, but she didn't wear a white coat like most doctors did. Her hair tied back tightly in a bun. It was black and her eyes were familiar. She sat in the chair that the doctor gestured to, her mother sat beside her. Clary got the sense that she'd seen her before, perhaps around the hospital.

"So, how are you feeling today, Clary?" asked the woman. Her voice was very curt, and it didn't match the homey feeling of this room. Clary must have looked like a mess, with her puffy eyes and messy bed hair.

"I'm okay," she lied.

From there, they started talking about her treatment regimen, and the series of drugs she was on. Her mother thankfully answered most of the questions for her, so she just sat there and stared at the walls of room. There were framed university degrees, photos that Clary couldn't quite make out in the dim lighting. She looked back at the doctor as there was a knock at the office door, and before the doctor answered, the door opened.

"Mom, I was going to take the car-" said a familiar voice. Clary turned her head and saw Alec Lightwood standing in the doorway.

"Alec, I'm with a patient right now," said the doctor with a tone of annoyance, whose nameplate read Maryse Lightwood, M.D.

Clary's eyes met Alec's, and everything snapped into place, along with the fact that this was her worst fear. Dr. Lightwood hastily introduced Alec to them as her son, and asked him to wait outside, please. Jocelyn looked from Clary to Alec, seeming confused. There must have been something in her face that revealed horror. Absolute horror. She felt the house of cards fall and blow away in the hellish, stormy breeze that seemed to fill this office.

"Hey, Clary," he said. His eyes were unwavering.

"Hey, Alec."


End file.
